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Serial.  ;    Bonble 


THE 


PULPIT  AND  ROSTRUM. 

,  &t. 


THE 

QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY 

AN    ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  IN  THE  ACADEMY  OF  MUSIC, 

IX  NEW  YORK, 

OX    THE    4TH    OF    JULY,     1861, 

BY 

HON.  EDWARD  .EVERETT. 


NEW   YORK: 
H.    H.    LLOYD    &    CO.,    25    HOWARD    ST. 

LONDON  :  Trubner  &  Co.,  6^)  Paternoster  Row. 
August  1st,  1861. 


AND    KOSTRTJM, 

AN   ELEGANT  PAMPHLET  SERIAL, 
CONTAINS    REPORTS    QF    THE    SEST 

SERMONS,  LECTURES,    ORATIONS,    Etc, 

VMMli:\V  .1.  UlAimi  and  CIIAKLKS  B.  COLLAR,  Reporters. 
Twelve  Numbers,  $1.00,  in  advance;  Single  Number,  10  cents. 

Tin-:  s)«-ci:il  olij.vt  in  th->  publication  of  this  Si-rial  is,  to  preserve  in  convenient  form  the  best 

thoughts  of  our  mo-!  iril't  ••!  ni"ii.  just  as  tln-y  coi-ur  1'roin  th.'ir  lips  ;  thus  retaining  their  freshness  and 

favor   has  alrrady  been  shown   the  work,  and  its  continuance  is  certain.     The 

ivo  numbers  \viil  lie  \<«i<-i[  as  ol'ten  as  Discourses  worthy  a  place  in  the  Serial  can  be  found  • 

oat  of  the  many  repoi  trd,  we  hope  to  elect  twelve  each  year. 


\r311SKIlS    ALREADY    PUBLISHED. 

No,  1.     CHRISTIAN     KKCKKAT10X    AND     UNCHRISTIAN     AMUSEMENT 
Si-nimn  l>y  K<-\    T    L.  Ci  VI.KK. 

X...  -2.     MKNTAL  CULTURE  FOR  WOMEN,  Addresses  by  Rev.  H.  W.  BEECIIEH 
and  Hon.  .l.\s.  T.  I'.UADV. 

N...  8.     GRANDEURS  OF  ASTRONOMY,  Discourse  l>y  Prof.  0.  M.  MITCHELL. 

No.   I       PROGRESS  AND  DK.MAN.DS  OF  CHRISTIANITY,  Sermon  by  Rev   WM 
II.  MJLBUEN. 

JESUS  AND  THE  ItKsr  I!  SECTION,  Sermon  by  Rev.  A.  KINGMAN  Norr. 

6.     TRIBUTE  TO  HUMBOLDT,  Addresses  by  Hon.  GEO.  BANCHOKT  Rev.  Dr. 
-,->\y.,  LiKiu.i;,  BACHM  and  GuYOT. 


No.  7.     COMING  TO  CHRIST,  Sermon  by  Rev.  HKXIIY  M.  SCUDDER,  D.  D.,  M.  D. 
No.  8.     DANIEL  WKIiSTi-;];.  Oration  l.y  JF,,n.  EDWARD  EVERETT,  at  the  In'au-m-- 
ation  of  the  statue  of  \\Yl.strr,  at  Boston,  Sept.  17th,  1859. 

x"   '•'      A     CHEERFUL    TK.MI'EII.    a  Thanksgiving  Discourse     by  Rev    WM 
ADAMS,  D.  J> 

10      DEATH     OF     WASHINGTON    IRVING,   Address  by  Hon.  EDWARD 
1  Smnoii  liy  Ili-v.  J.\.».  A.  TODU. 


11.     GEORGE     WASHINGTON,  Oration  by  Hon.  Tnos.  S.  BOCOCK   at  the 
Inaugnn  tion  ol   the  stiitue  of  Washington,  in  the  city  of  Washington,  February 

No.  12.     TRAVEL,   ITS  PLEASURES,  ADVANTAGES  AND  REQUIKEMENTS 
ire  by  J.  H.  SMIHH.V-'. 

18.      ITALIAN    [NDEPENDENCE,  Addresses  by  Rev.  HENRY  WARD  BEECIIKB 
i!.:M:v  \v.  BBLLOWS,   D.  D.,  Rev.  Jos.  P.  THOMPSON,  D.  D    and  Prof  '  o    M' 
HJELL.     JMhvivd  in  New  y«,rk.  l-'.-b.  17th,  1800. 

'  J^YS^O^  OUB  KEPUBLIC<  Cation  by  Hon.  EDWARD  EVERKTT,  in 

r>  <v   Hi      PS  !"  I'11"'  L'°  rr"tsJ  WEBSTER'S  SPEECH,    in   the   United 
Senate  on  the  FORCE  BILL,  and  JACKSON'S   PROCLAMATION  to  South 

*  ai  i  >liiia  in    : 

|s-     (Tw°  '"  one,  I'D  cents,  i  U'KHSTER'S  REPLY  TO  IIAYNE 


H 


j      ' 


on- 


'•••nl  DQmberfl  are  lu-cmptly  MKU;,.,!  from  the  ol!ir<>.  (,n  rcccij.t  of  tho  price. 

H.  H.  LLOYD  &  CO.,  Publishers,  25  Howard  St.,  N.  Y. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


NEW  YORK,  28^  May,  1861. 
HON.  EDWARD  EVERETT  : 

Dear  Sir — The  undersigned,  having  read  your  late  speech  at  Roxbury 
with  deep  satisfaction,  and  knowing  that  many  of  their  fellow-citizens 
regard  it  as  a  true  and  eloquent  expression  of  the  feelings  of  the 
aroused,  patriotic,  national  heart,  concerning  the  great  events  and  exi 
gencies  of  the  day,  and  believing  that  a  similar  address  by  you  in  this 
city  would  be  of  great  public  utility,  respectfully  request  you  to  ad 
dress  the  citizens  of  New  York,  at  the  Academy  of  Music,  at  the 
earliest  day  that  will  suit  your  convenience. 

GARDINER  SPRING,  JAMES  HARPER, 

M.  H.  GRINNELL,  WM.  E.  DODGE, 

JOHN  J.  Cisco,  DANIEL  F.  TIEMANN, 

AUGUST  BELMONT,  S.  DRAPER, 

MOSES  TAYLOR,  GEO.  P.  MORRIS, 

WILSON  G.  HUNT,  GEO.  W.  BLUNT, 

THOMAS  DEWITT,  CHAS.  SCRIBNER, 

GEORGE  POTTS,  D.  P.  INGRAHAM, 

PETER  COOPER,  STEPHEN  H.  TYNG, 

J.  E.  WHITING,  WM.  M.  EVARTS, 

L.  BRADISH,  S.  IUEN^EUS  PRIME, 

HORATIO  POTTER,  JAS.  T.  BRADY, 

GEORGE  BANCROFT,  SAMUEL  E.  BETTS, 

HAMILTON  FISH,  WM.  B.  TAYLOR,  P.M., 

VALENTINE  MOTT,  EOYAL  PHELPS, 

HENRY  W.  BELLOWS,  ALEX.  W.  BRADFORD, 

JOHN  A.  Dix,  N.  P.  WILLIS, 

WILLIAM  H.  ASPINWALL,  WM.  H.  APPLETON, 

GEORGE  GRISWOLD,  JUN.,  HENRY  J.  EAYMOND, 

WM.  CURTIS  NOYES,  HORACE  GRKELEY 


232  INTRODUCTORY.  •• 

BOSTON,  )Qth  June,  1861. 
GENTLEMEN  : 

I  have  received  this  day  your  letter  of  the  28th  ult.,  inviting  me  to 
deliver  an  address  in  the  Academy  of  Music,  on  the  great  issues  now 
before  the  country.  I  feel  much  honored  by  such  a  call,  and  I  shall 
have  great  pleasure  in  obeying  it  at  an  early  day.  It  has  been  sug 
gested  to  me  that  the  Fourth  of  July  would,  as  a  public  holiday,  be  a 
convenient  day  for  the  purpose.  The  anniversary  of  the  great  Decla 
ration  would  certainly  be  an  appropriate  occasion  for  an  attempt  to 
vindicate  the  principles,  now  so  formidably  assailed,  on  which  the  Inde 
pendence  of  the  United  States,  as  O\E  PEOPLE,  was  originally  asserted. 
I  am,  Gentlemen,  most  respectfully  yours, 

EDWARD  EVERETT. 

P.  S. — Understanding  that  it  is  proposed  to  issue  tickets  of  admis 
sion,  I  would  respectfully  suggest  that  the  proceeds  should  be  applied 
to  the  relief  of  the  families  of  the  New  York  Volunteers. 

To  HON.  L.  BRADISII,  VALENTINE  MOTT,  M.D., 

RT.  REV.  BISHOP  POTTER,  REV.  DR.  GARDINER  SPRING, 

HON.  GEO.  BANCROFT,  M.  II.  GRINNELL,  ESQ., 

HON.  HAMILTON  Fisir,  REV.  DR.  BELLOWS, 

MAJOR-GENERAL  Dix, 
And  the  other  gentlemen  whose  names  are  subscribed  to  the  invitation. 


THE    QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAT.* 


An  Address  delivered  in  the  Academy  of  Music,  N^ew  York,  on  the  Fourth  oj 
July,  1861,  by  lion.  Edward  Everett. 

WHEN  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  on  the  4th  of  July, 
1770,  issued  the  ever-memorable  Declaration,  which  we  com 
memorate  to-day,  they  deemed  that  a  decent  respect  for  the 
opinions  of  mankind  required  a  formal  statement  of  the  causes 
which  impelled  them  to  the  all-important  measure.  The  eighty- 
fifth  anniversary  of  the  great  Declaration  finds  the  loyal  people  of 
the  Union  engaged  in  a  tremendous  conflict,  to  maintain  and  de 
fend  the  grand  nationality  which  was  asserted  by  our  fathers,  and 
to  prevent  their  fair  creation  from  crumbling  into  dishonorable 
chaos.  A  great  people,  gallantly  struggling  to  keep  a  noble  frame 
work  of  government  from  falling  into  wretched  fragments,  needs 
no  justification  at  the  tribunal  of  the  public  opinion  of  mankind. 
But  while  our  patriotic  fellow-citizens,  who  have  rallied  to  the 
defense  of  the  Union,  marshaled  by  the  ablest  of  living  chieftains, 
are  risking  their  lives  in  the  field;  while  the  blood  of  your  youth 
ful  heroes  and  ours  is  poured  out  together  in  defense  of  this  precious 
legacy  of  constitutional  freedom,  you  will  not  think  it  a  misappro 
priation  of  the  hour  if  I  employ  it  in  showing  the  justice  of  the 
cause  in  which  we  are  engaged,  and  the  fallacy  of  the  arguments 
employed  by  the  South  in  vindication  of  the  war,  alike  murderous 
and  suicidal,  which  she  is  waging  against  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union. 

PROSPEROUS  STATE  OF  THE  COUNTRY  LAST  TEAR. 

A  twelvemonth  ago,  nay,  six  or  seven  months  ago,  our  countrj 
was  regarded  and  spoken  of  by  the  rest  of  the  civilized  world  as 
among  the  most  prosperous  in  the  family  of  nations.  It  was 
classed  with  England,  France,  and  Russia,  as  one  of  the  four  lead 
ing  powers  of  the  age.f  Remote  as  we  were  from  the  complica- 

*  Large  portions  of  this  Address  were,  on  account  of  its  length,  necessarily 
omitted  in  the  delivery, 
t  The  Edinburgh  R  view  for  April,  1861,  p.  555. 


034  •'•  ..  -   THE.  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

•tions'tJf  foreign' politics^  the  extent  of  our  commerce,  and  the 
efficiency  of  our  navy  won  for  us  the  respectful  consideration  of 
Europe.  The  United  States  were  particularly  referred  to  on  all 
occasions  and  in  all  countries,  as  an  illustration  of  the  mighty  in 
fluence  of  free  governments  in  promoting  the  prosperity  of  states. 
In  England,  notwithstanding  some  diplomatic  collisions  on  boun 
dary  questions,  and  occasional  hostile  reminiscences  of  the  past, 
there  has  hardly  been  a  debate  for  thirty  years  in  Parliament,  on 
any  topic,  in  reference  to  which  this  country  in  the  nature  of 
things  afforded  matter  of  comparison,  in  which  it  was  not  referred 
to  as  furnishing  instructive  examples  of  prosperous  enterprise  and 
hopeful  progress.  At  home,  the  country  grew  as  by  enchantment. 
Its  vast  geographical  extent,  augmented  by  magnificent  accessions 
of  conterminous  territory  peacefully  made  ;  its  population  far  more 
rapidly  increasing  than  that  of  any  other  country,  and  swelled  by 
an  emigration  from  Europe  such  as  the  world  has  never  before 
seen  ;  the  mutually  beneficial  intercourse  between  its  different  sec 
tions  and  climates,  each  supplying  what  the  other  wants;  the 
rapidity  with  which  the  arts  of  civilization  have  been  extended 
over  a  before  unsettled  wilderness,  and,  together  with  this  material 
prosperity,  the  advance  of  the  country  in  education,  literature, 
science,  and  refinement,  formed  a  spectacle  of  which  the  history 
of  mankind  furnished  no  other  example.  That  such  was  the  state 
of  the  country  six  months  ago  was  matter  of  general  recognition 
and  acknowledgment  at  home  and  abroad. 

THE    PEESIDENTIAL   ELECTION    AXD    ITS    RESULTS. 

There  was,  however,  one  sad  deduction  to  be  made,  not  from 
the  truth  of  this  description,  not  from  the  fidelity  of  this  picture, 
for  that  is  incontestable,  but  from  the  content,  happiness,  and 
mutual  good-will  which  ought  to  have  existed  on  the  part  of  a 
people  favored  by  such  an  accumulation  of  Providential  blessings. 
I  allude,  of  course,  to  the  great  sectional  controversies  which  have 
so  long  agitated  the  country,  and  arrayed  the  people  in  bitter 
geographical  antagonism  of  political  organization  and  action. 
Fierce  party  contentions  had  always  existed  in  the  United  States, 
as  they  ever  have  and  unquestionably  ever  will  exist  under  all  free 
elective  governments;  and  these  contentions  had,  from  the  first, 
tended  somewhat  to  a  sectional  character.  They  had  not, 
however,  till  quite  lately,  assumed  that  character  so  exclusively 
that  the  minority  in  any  one  part  of  the  country  had  not 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  235 

had  a  respectable  electoral  representation  in  every  other.  Till 
last  November,  there  has  never  been  a  Southern  Presidential 
candidate  who  did  not  receive  electoral  votes  at  the  North, 
nor  a  Northern  candidate  who  did  not  receive  electoral  votes  at 
the  South. 

At  the  late  election,  and  for  the  first  time,  this  was  not  the  case ; 
and  consequences  the  most  extraordinary  and  deplorable  have  re 
sulted.  The  country,  as  we  have  seen,  being  in  profound  peace  at 
home  and  abroad  and  in  a  state  of  unexampled  prosperity — agricul 
ture,  commerce,  navigation,  manufactures,  East,  West,  North,  and 
South  recovered,  or  rapidly  recovering,  from  the  crisis  of  1857 — 
powerful  and  respected  abroad,  and  thriving  beyond  example  at 
home,  entered,  in  the  usual  manner,  upon  the  electioneering 
campaign,  for  the  choice  of  the  nineteenth  President  of  the  United 
States.  I  say  in  the  usual  manner,  though  it  is  true  that  parties 
were  more  than  usually  broken  up  and  subdivided.  The  normal 
division  was  into  two  great  parties,  but  there  had  on  several  former 
occasions  been  three ;  in  1824  there  were  four,  and  there  were 
four  last  November.  The  South,  equally  with  the  West  and  the 
North,  entered  into  the  canvass ;  conventions  were  held,  nomina 
tions  made,  mass  meetings  assembled;  the  platform,  the  press 
enlisted  with  unwonted  vigor  ;  the  election,  in  all  its  stages, 
conducted  in  legal  and  constitutional  form,  without  violence 
and  without  surprise,  and  the  result  obtained  by  a  decided 
majority. 

No  sooner,  however,  was  this  result  ascertained,  than  it  appeared 
on  the  part  of  one  of  the  Southern  States — and  her  example  was 
rapidly  followed  by  others— that  it  had  by  no  means  been  the  in 
tention  of  those  States  to  abide  by  the  result  of  the  election,  except 
on  the  one  condition,  of  the  choice  of  their  candidate.  The 
reference  of  the  great  sectional  controversy  to  the  peaceful  arbitra 
ment  of  the  ballot-box,  the  great  safety-valve  of  republican  in 
stitutions,  though  made  with  every  appearance  of  good  faith  on 
the  part  of  our  brethren  at  the  South,  meant  but  this :  if  we  suc 
ceed  in  this  election,  as  we  have  in  fifteen  that  have  preceded  it, 
well  and  good ;  we  will  consent  to  govern  the  country  for  four 
years  more,  as  we  have  already  governed  it  for  sixty  years ;  but  we 
have  no  intention  of  acquiescing  in  any  other  result.  We  do  not 
mean  to  abide  by  the  election,  although  we  participate  in  it,  unless 
our  candidate  is  chosen.  If  he  fails,  we  intend  to  prostrate  the 
Government  and  break  up  the  Union;  peaceably,  if  the  States 


23C,  THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

composing  the  majority  are  willing  that  it  should  be  broken  up 
peaceably;  otherwise,  at  the  point  of  the  sword. 

SOL'TII    CAROLINA    SECEDES    FROM   THE    UNION. 

The  election  took  place  on  the  Cth  of  November,  and  in  pur 
suance  of  the  extraordinary  programme  just  described,  the  State 
of  South  Carolina,  acting  by  a  Convention  chosen  for  the  purpose, 
assembled  on  the  17th  of  December,  and  on  the  20th  passed 
unanimously  what  was  styled  "An  Ordinance  to  dissolve  the  Union 
between  the  State  of  South  Carolina  and  other  States  united  with 
her,  under  the  compact  entitled  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  of  America."  It  is  not  my  purpose  on  this  occasion  to 
make  a  documentary  speech,  but  as  this  so-called  "  Ordinance"  is 
very  short,  and  affords  matter  for  deep  reflection,  I  beg  leave  to 
recite  it  in  full : 

"  We,  the  people  of  the  State  of  South  Carolina,  in  Convention 
assembled,  do  declare  and  ordain,  and  it  is  hereby  declared  and 
ordained,  that  the  ordinance  adopted  by  us  in  Convention  on  the 
23d  day  of  May,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1788,  whereby  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States  was  ratified,  and  also  all  acts  and 
parts  of  acts  of  the  General  Assembly  of  this  State,  ratifying  the 
amendments  of  the  said  Constitution,  are  hereby  repealed,  and  that 
the  Union  now  subsisting  between  South  Carolina  and  other 
States,  under  the  name  of  the  United  States  of  America,  is  dis 
solved." 

This  remarkable  document  is  called  an  "  Ordinance,"  and  no 
doubt  some  special  virtue  is  supposed  to  reside  in  the  name.  But 
names  are  nothing,  except  as  they  truly  represent  things.  An 
ordinance,  if  it  is  anything  clothed  with  binding  force,  is  a  law, 
and  nothing  but  a  law,  and  as  such  this  ordinance,  being  in  direct 
violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  is  a  mere  nullity. 
The  Constitution  contains  the  following  express  provision  :  "  This 
Constitution,  and  the  laws  of  the  United  States  made  in  pursuance 
thereof,  and  the  treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under  the 
authority  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land,  and  the  judges  in  every  State  shall  be  bound  thereby,  any 
thing  in  the  Constitution  or  laws  of  any  State  to  the  contrary  not 
withstanding."  Such  being  the  express  provision  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  which  the  people  of  South  Carolina  adopted 
in  1788,  just  as  much  as  they  ever  adopted  cither  of  their  State  Con 
stitutions,  is  it  not  trifling  with  serious  things  to  claim  that,  by  the 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE   DAY.  237 

simple  expedient  of  passing  a  law  under  the  name  of  an  ordinance, 
this  provision  and  every  other  provision  of  it  may  be  nullified,  and 
every  magistrate  and  officer  in  Carolina,  whether  of  the  State  or 
Union,  absolved  from  the  oath  which  they  have  taken  to  support  it  ? 

But  this  is  not  all.  This  secession  ordinance  purports  "tore- 
peal"  the  ordinance  of  23d  May,  1788,  by  which  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  was  ratified  by  the  people  of  South  Carolina. 
It  was  intended,  of  course,  by  calling  the  act  of  ratification  an  or 
dinance,  to  infer  a  right  of  repealing  it  by  another  ordinance.  It 
is  important,  therefore,  to  observe,  that  the  act  of  ratification  is 
not,  and  was  not  at  the  time,  called  an  ordinance,  and  contains 
nothing  which  by  possibility  can  be  repealed.  It  is  in  the  follow 
ing  terms  : 

u  The  Convention  [of  the  people  of  South  Carolina]  having  ma 
turely  considered  the  Constitution,  or  form  of  government,  re 
ported  to  Congress  by  the  convention  of  delegates  from  the  United 
States  of  America,  and  submitted  to  them  by  a  resolution  of  the 
Legislature  of  this  State,  passed  the  17th  and  18th  days  of  Feb 
ruary  last,  in  order  to  form  a  more  perfect  Union,  establish  justice, 
insure  domestic  tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defense,  pro 
mote  the  general  welfare,  and  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty  to  the 
people  of  the  said  United  States  and  their  posterity,  do,  in  the  name 
and  in  behalf  of  the  people  of  this  State,  hereby  assent  to  and 
ratify  the  same." 

Here  it  is  evident  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  instrument  which, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  can  be  repealed  ;  it  is  an  authorized  solemn 
assertion  of  the  people  of  South  Carolina,  that  they  assent  to  and 
ratify  a  form  of  government  which  is  declared  in  terms  to  be  par 
amount  to  all  State  laws  and  constitutions.  This  is  a  great  his 
torical  fact,  the  most  important  that  can  ever  occur  in  the  history 
of  a  people.  The  fact  that  the  people  of  South  Carolina,  on  the 
23d  of  May,  1788,  assented  to  and  ratified  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  in  order,  among  other  objects,  to  secure  the  bless 
ings  of  liberty  for  themselves  and  "  their  posterity,"  can  no  more 
be  repealed  in  1861  than  any  other  historical  fact  that  occurred  in 
Charleston  in  that  year  and  on  that  day.  It  would  be  just  as  ra 
tional,  at  the  present  day,  to  attempt  by  ordinance  to  repeal  any 
other  event,  as  that  the  sun  rose  or  that  the  tide  ebbed  and  flowed 
on  that  day,  as  to  repeal  by  ordinance  the  assent  of  Carolina  to  the 
Constitution. 

Again ;  it  is  well  known  that  various  amendments  to  the  Con- 


<>38  THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

stitution  were  desired  and  proposed  in  different  States.     The  first 
of  the  amendments  proposed  by  South  Carolina  was  as  follows: 

u  Whereas,  it  is  essential  to  the  preservation  of  the  rights  re 
served  to  the  several  States  and  the  freedom  of  the  people  under 
the  operation  of  the  general  Government,  that  the  right  of  pre- 
scrihing  the  manner,  times,  and  places  of  holding  the  elections  of 
the  Federal  Legislature  should  be  forever  inseparably  annexed 
to  the  sovereignty  of  the  States;  this  Convention  doth  declare 
that  the  same  ought  to  remain  to  all  posterity  a  perpetual  and 
fundamental  right  in  the  local,  exclusive  of  the  interference  of  the 
general  Government,  except  in  cases  where  the  Legislature  of  the 
States  shall  refuse  or  neglect  to  perform  or  fulfill  the  same  accord 
ing  to  the  tenor  of  the  said  Constitution." 

Here  you  perceive  that  South  Carolina  herself,  in  1788,  desired 
a  provision  to  be  made  and  annexed  inseparably  to  her  sov 
ereignty,  that  she  should  forever  have  the  power  of  prescribing 
the  time,  place,  and  manner  of  holding  the  elections  of  members  of 
Congress ;  but  even  in  making  this  express  reservation  to  operate 
for  all  posterity,  she  was  willing  to  provide  that,  if  the  State  legis 
latures  refuse  or  neglect  to  perform  the  duty  (which  is  precisely 
the  case  of  the  seceding  States  at  the  present  day),  then  the  gen 
eral  Government  was,  by  this  South  Carolina  amendment,  ex 
pressly  authorized  to  do  it.  South  Carolina  in  1788,  by  a  sort  of 
prophetic  foresight,  looked  forward  to  the  possibility  that  the 
States  might  u  refuse  or  neglect"  to  co-operate  in  carrying  on  the 
government,  and  admitted,  in  that  case,  that  the  general  Govern 
ment  must  go  on  in  spite  of  their  delinquency. 

I  have  dwelt  on  these  points  at  some  length  to  show  how  futile 
is  the  attempt,  by  giving  the  name  of  "  ordinance"  to  the  act,  by 
which  South  Carolina  adopted  the  Constitution  and  entered  the 
Union,  to  gain  a  power  to  leave  it  by  a  subsequent  ordinance  of 
repeal.* 

IS    SECESSION   A   CONSTITUTIONAL   EIGHT,    OE   IS   IT   EEYOLUTION  ? 

Whether  the  present  unnatural  civil  war  is  waged  by  the  South 
in  virtue  of  a  supposed  constitutional  right  to  leave  the  Union  at 
pleasure,  or  whether  it  is  an  exercise  of  the  great  and  ultimate 
right  of  revolution,  the  existence  of  which  no  one  denies,  seems 
to  be  left  in  uncertainty  by  the  leaders  of  the  movement.  Mr. 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


o 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  239 

Jefferson  Davis,  the  President  of  the  new  Confederacy,  in  his  in 
augural  speech  delivered  on  the  18th  of  February,  declares  that  it 
is  "  an  abuse  of  language"  to  call  it  "  a  revolution."  Mr.  Vice- 
President  Stephens,  on  the  contrary,  in  a  speech  at  Savannah,  on 
the  21st  of  March,  pronounces  it  "  one  of  the  greatest  revolutions 
in  the  annals  of  the  world."  The  question  is  of  great  magnitude 
as  one  of  constitutional  and  public  law  ;  as  one  of  morality,  it  is 
"of  very  little  consequence  whether  the  country  is  drenched  in 
blood  in  the  exercise  of  a  right  claimed  under  the  Constitution,  or 
the  right  inherent  in  every  community  to  revolt  against  an  op 
pressive  government.  Unless  the  oppression  is  so  extreme  as  to 
justify  revolution,  it  would  not  justify  the  evil  of  breaking  up 
a  government,  under  an  abstract  constitutional  right  to  do  so. 

NEITHER    A   GEANTED    NOE    A   EESERVED    EIGHT. 

This  assumed  right  of  secession  rests  upon  the  doctrine,  that  the 
Union  is  a  compact  between  independent  States,  from  which  any 
one  of  them  may  withdraw  at  pleasure  in  virtue  of  its  sovereignty. 
This  imaginary  right  has  been  the  subject  of  discussion  for  more 
than  thirty  years,  having  been  originally  suggested,  though  not  at 
first  much  dwelt  upon,  in  connection  with  the  kindred  claim  of  a 
right,  on  the  part  of  an  individual  State,  to  u  nullify"  an  act  of 
Congress.  It  would,  of  course,  be  impossible,  within  the  limits  of 
the  hour,  to  review  these  elaborate  discussions.  I  will  only  re 
mark,  on  this  occasion,  that  none  of  the  premises  from  which  this 
remarkable  conclusion  is  drawn,  are  recognized  in  the  Constitution, 
and  that  the  right  of  secession,  though  claimed  to  be  a  "  reserved" 
right,  is  not  expressly  reserved  in  it.  That  instrument  does  not 
purport  to  be  a  "  compact,"  but  a  Constitution  of  Government.  It 
appears  in  its  first  sentence  not  to  have  been  entered  into  by  the 
States,  but  to  have  been  ordained  and  established  by  the  people  of 
the  United  States  for  "  themselves  and  their  posterity."  The 
States  are  not  named  in  it ;  nearly  all  th_e_characteristic  powers  of 

^sovereignty  are  expressly  granted  to  the  generarGovernment  and 
Expressly  prohibited  to  the  States,  and  so  far  from  reserving  a  right 
•pf  secession  to  the  latter  on  any  ground  or  under  any  pretense,  it 
brdains  and  establishes  in  terms  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  as  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  anything  in  the  Oonstitu- 

*.  tion  or  laws  of  any  State  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

It  would  seem  that  this  is  as  clear  and  positive  as  language  can 
make  it.  But  it  is  argued  that,  though  the  right  of  secession  is 


240  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

not  reserved  in  terms,  it  must  be  considered  as  implied  in  the  gen 
eral  reservation  to  the  States  and  to  the  people  of  all  the  powers 
not  granted  to  Congress  nor  prohibited  to  the  States.  This  extra 
ordinary  assumption,  more  distinctly  stated,  is  that,  in  direct 
defiance  of  the  express  grant  to  Congress  and  the  express  prohibi 
tion  to  the  States  of  nearly  all  the  powers  of  an  independent  gov 
ernment,  there  is,  ~by  implication,  a  right  reserved  to  the  States  to 
assume  and  exercise  all  these  powers  thus  vested  in  the  Union  and 
prohibited  to  themselves,  simply  in  virtue  of  going  through  the 
ceremony  of  passing  a  law  called  an  Ordinance  of  Secession.  A 
general  reservation  to  the  States  of  powers  not  prohibited  to 
them,  nor  granted  to  Congress,  is  an  implied  reservation  to  the 
States  of  a  right  to  exercise  these  very  powers  thus  expressly 
delegated  to  Congress,  and  thus  expressly  prohibited  to  the 
States! 

The  Constitution  directs  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
shall  have  power  to  declare  war,  grant  letters  of  marque  and  re 
prisal,  to  raise  and  support  armies,  to  provide  and  maintain  a 
navy,  and  that  the  President  of  the  United  States,  by  and  with  the 
advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  shall  make  treaties  with  foreign 
powers. 

These  express  grants  of  power  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  are  followed  by  prohibitions  as  express  to  the  seve 
ral  States : 

u  Xo  State  shall  enter  into  any  treaty,  alliance,  or  confederation, 
grant  letters  of  marque  or  reprisal ;  no  State  shall,  without  the  con 
sent  of  Congress,  lay  any  duty  of  tonnage,  keep  troops  or  ships  of  war 
in  time  of  peace,  enter  into  any  agreement  or  compact  with  another 
State,  or  with  a  foreign  power,  or  engage  in  war,  unless  actually 
invaded,  or  in  such  imminent  danger  as  will  not  admit  of  delay." 

These  and  numerous  other  express  grants  of  power  to  the  gen 
eral  government,  and  express  prohibitions  to  the  States,  are  fur 
ther  enforced  by  the  comprehensive  provision,  already  recited, 
that  the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the  United  States  are  paramount 
to  the  laws  and  Constitutions  of  the  separate  States. 

And  this  Constitution,  with  these  express  grants  and  express 
prohibitions,  and  with  this  express  subordination  of  the  States  to 
the  general  Government,  has  been  adopted  by  the  people  of  all 
the  States ;  and  all  their  judges  and  other  officers,  and  all  their 
citizens  holding  office  under  the  Government  of  the  United  States, 
or  the  individual  States,  are  solemnly  sworn  to  support  it. 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  241 

In  the  face  of  all  this,  in  defiance  of  all  this,  in  violation  of  all 
this,  in  contempt  of  all  this,  the  seceding  States  claim  the  right  to 
exercise  every  power  expressly  delegated  to  Congress  and  expressly 
prohibited  to  the  States  by  that  Constitution,  which  every  one  of 
their  prominent  men,  civil  and  military,  is  under  oath  to  support. 
They  have  entered  into  a  confederation,  raised  an  army,  attempted 
to  provide  a  navy,  issued  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal,  waged 
war,  and  that  war — Merciful  Heaven,  forgive  them! — not  with  a 
foreign  enemy,  not  with  the  wild  tribes  which  still  desolate  the 
unprotected  frontier  (they,  it  is  said,  are  swelling,  armed  with 
tomahawk  and  scalping-knife,  the  Confederate  forces),  but  with 
their  own  countrymen,  and  the  mildest  and  most  beneficent  gov 
ernment  on  the  face  of  the  earth ! 

BEFORE    THE    REVOLUTION    THE    COLONIES    WERE    A    PEOPLE. 

But  we  are  told  all  this  is  done  in  virtue  of  the  sovereignty  of  the 
States ;  as  if,  because  a  State  is  sovereign,  its  people  were  incom 
petent  to  establish  a  government  for  themselves  and  their  posterity. 
Certainly  the  States  are  clothed  with  sovereignty  for  local  pur-  , 
poses;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  ever  possessed  it  in  any 
other  sense ;  and  if  they  had,  it  is  certain  that  they  ceded  it  to  the 
general  Government,  in  adopting  the  Constitution.  Before  their 
independence  of  England  was  asserted,  they  constituted  a  provin 
cial  people  (Burke  calls  it  "a  glorious  empire"),  subject  to  the 
British  crown,  organized  for  certain  purposes  under  separate 
colonial  charters,  but  on  some  great  occasions  of  political  interest 
and  public  safety,  acting  as  one.  Thus  they  acted  when,  on  the 
approach  of  the  great  Seven  Years'  War,  which  exerted  such  an 
important  influence  on  the  fate  of  British  America,  they  sent  their 
delegates  to  Albany  to  concert  a  plan  of  union.  In  the  discus 
sions  of  that  plan,  which  was  reported  by  Franklin,  the  citizens 
of  the  colonies  were  evidently  considered  as  a  people.  When  the 
passage  of  the  Stamp  Act,  in  17G5,  roused  the  spirit  of  resistance 
throughout  America,  the  unity  of  her  people  assumed  a  still  more 
practical  form.  "  Union,"  says  one  of  our  great  American  his 
torians,*  "  was  the  hope  of  Otis.  Union  that  '  should  knit  and 
work  into  the  very  blood  and  bones  of  the  original  system 
every  region,  as  fast  as  settled.'  "  In  this  hope  he  argued  against 
writs  of  assistance,  and  in  this  hope  he  brought  about  the  call  of 


*  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  V.,  p. 


242  TIIE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  Convention  at  New  York  in  1765.  At  that  Convention,  the 
noble  South  Carolinian,  Christopher  Gadsden,  with  almost  pro 
phetic  foresight  of  the  disintegrating  heresies  of  the  present  day, 
cautioned  his  associates  against  too  great  dependence  on  their  colo 
nial  charters.  "I  wish,"  said  he,  "that  the  charters  may  not 
ensnare  us  at  last,  by  drawing  different  colonies  to  act  differently 
in  this  great  cause.  Whenever  that  is  the  case,  all  is  over  with  the 
whole.  There  ought  to  be  no  New  England  man,  no  New  Yorker, 
known  on  the  continent,  ~but  all  of  us  Americans.  ."* 

While  the  patriots  in  America  counseled,  arid  wrote,  and  spoke 
as  a  people,  they  were  recognized  as  such  in  England.  "Believe 
me,"  cried  Colonel  Barre  in  the  House  of  Commons,  "I  this  day 
told  you  so,  the  same  spirit  of  freedom  which  actuated  that  people 
at  first  will  accompany  them  still.  The  people,  I  believe,  are  as 
truly  loyal  as  any  subjects  the  king  has ;  but  a  people  jealous  of 
their  liberties,  and  who  will  vindicate  them  should  they  be  vio 
lated." 

When,  ten  years  later,  the  great  struggle,  long  foreboded,  came 
on,  it  was  felt,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  to  be  an  attempt  to 
reduce  a  free  people  beyond  the  sea  to  unconditional  dependence 
on  a  parliament  in  which  they  were  not  represented.  "What 
foundation  have  we,"  was  the  language  of  Chatham  on  the  27th  of 
Jan.,  1775,  "for  our  claims  over  America?  What  is  our  right  to 
persist  in  such  cruel  and  vindictive  measures  against  that  loyal, 
respectable  people  ?"  "  How  have  this  respectable  people  behaved 
under  all  their  grievances?"  "Repeal,  therefore,  I  say.  But  bare 
repeal  will  not  satisfy  this  enlightened  and  spirited  people.'1''  Lord 
Camden,  in  the  same  debate,  exclaimed,  "You  have  no  right  to 
tax  America;  the  natural  rights  of  man  and  the  immutable  laws 
of  nature  are  with  that  people.'''1  Burke,  two  months  later,  made 
his  great  speech  for  conciliation  with  America.  "I  do  not  know," 
he  exclaimed,  "the  method  of  drawing  up  an  indictment  against 
a  WHOLE  PEOPLE."  In  a  letter  written  two  years  after  the  com 
mencement  of  the  war,  he  traces  the  growth  of  the  colonies  from 
their  feeble  beginnings  to  the  magnitude  which  they  had  attained 
when  the  Revolution  broke  out,  and  in  which  his  glowing  imagina 
tion  saw  future  grandeur  and  power  beyond  the  reality.  "  At  the 
first  designation  of  these  colonial  assemblies,"  says  he,  "they  were 
probably  not  intended  for  anything  more  (nor,  perhaps,  did  they 

*  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  V.,  p.  336. 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  243 

think  themselves  much  higher),  than  the  municipal  corporations 
within  this  island,  to  which  some  at  present  love  to  compare  them. 
But  nothing  in  progression  can  rest  on  its  original  plan  ;  we  may 
as  well  think  of  rocking  a  grown  man  in  the  cradle  of  an  infant. 
Therefore,  as  the  colonies  prospered  and  increased  to  A  NUMEROUS 
AND  MIGHTY  PEOPLE,  spreading  over  a  very  great  tract  of  the  globe, 
it  was  natural  that  they  should  attribute  to  assemblies  so  respect 
able  in  the  formed  Constitution,  some  part  of  the  dignity  of  the 
great  nations  which  they  represented." 

The  meeting  of  the. first  Continental  Congress  of  1774  was  the 
spontaneous  impulse  of  the  people.  All  their  resolves  and  addresses 
proceed  on  the  assumption  that  they  represented  a  people.  Their 
first  appeal  to  the  royal  authority  was  their  letter  to  General  Gage, 
remonstrating  against  the  fortifications  of  Boston.  "  We  entreat 
your  excellency  to  consider,"  they  say,  "what  a  tendency  this 
conduct  must  have  to  irritate  and  force  a  free  people,  hitherto  well 
disposed  to  peaceable  measures,  into  hostilities."  Their  final  act, 
at  the  close  of  the  session — their  address  to  the  king,  one  of  the 
most  eloquent  and  pathetic  of  state  papers — appeals  to  him  "in  the 
name  of  all  your  majesty's  faithful  people  in  America." 

THE    DECLARATION    OF    INDEPENDENCE    RECOGNIZES    A    PEOPLE. 

But  this  all-important  principle  in  our  political  system  is  placed 
beyond  doubt  by  an  authority  which  makes  all  further  argument 
or  illustration  superfluous.  That  the  citizens  of  the  British  colo 
nies,  however  divided  for  local  purposes  into  different  governments, 
when  they  ceased  to  be  subject  to  the  English  crown,  became 
ipso  facto  one  people  for  all  the  high  concerns  of  national  exist 
ence,  is  a  fact  embodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  itself. 
That  august  manifesto,  the  Magnet  Charta,  which  introduced  us 
into  the  family  of  nations,  was  issued  to  the  world — so  its  first 
sentence  sets  forth — because  "  a  decent  respect  for  the  opinions  of 
mankind  requires"  such  solemn  announcement  of  motives  and 
causes  to  be  made,  "  when  in  the  course  of  human  events  it 
becomes  necessary  for  one  people  to  dissolve  the  political  bonds 
which  have  connected  them  with  another."  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis, 
in  his  message  of  the  29th  of  April,  deems  it  important  to  remark 
that,  by  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain,  "  the  several 
States  were  each  by  name  recognized  to  be  independent,"  It 
would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  the  United  States,  each  by 
name,  were  so  recognized.  Such  enumeration  was  necessary,  in 


244  THE   QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY. 

order  to  fix,  beyond  doubt,  which  of  the  Anglo-American  colonies, 
twenty-five  or  six  in  number,  were  included  in  the  recognition.* 
But  it  is  surely  a  far  more  significant  circumstance,  that  the  sepa 
rate  States  are  not  named  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence ; 
that  they  are  called  only  by  the  collective  designation  of  the  United 
States  of  America ;  that  the  manifesto  is  issued  "  in  the  name  and 
by  the  authority  of  the  good  people"  of  the  colonies,  and  that  they 
are  characterized  in  the  first  sentence  as  u  one  people." 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that  these  are  the  latitudinarian  doctrines 
of  modern  times,  or  of  a  section  of  the  country  predisposed  to  a 
loose  construction  of  laws  and  constitutions.  Listen,  I  pray 
you,  to  the  words  of  a  noble  Southern  Revolutionary  patriot  and 
statesman: 

"  The  separate  independence  and  individual  sovereignty  of  the 
several  States  were  never  thought  of  by  the  enlightened  band  of 
patriots  who  framed  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  The  sev 
eral  States  are  not  even  mentioned  by  name  in  any  part  of  it,  as 
if  it  was  intended  to  impress  this  maxim  on  America,  that  our 
freedom  and  independence  arose  from  our  Union,  and  that  without 
it  we  could  neither  be  free  nor  independent.  Let  us  then  consider 
all  attempts  to  weaken  this  Union,  by  maintaining  that  eacli  State 
is  separately  and  individually  independent,  as  a  species  of  political 
heresy  which  can  never  benefit  us,  and  may  bring  on  us  the  most 
serious  distresses."! 

These  are  the  solemn  arid  prophetic  words  of  Charles  Cotes- 
worth  Pinckney— the  patriot,  the  soldier,  the  statesman — the 
trusted  friend  of  Washington,  repeatedly  called  by  him  to  the 
highest  offices  of  the  government — the  one  name  that  stands 
highest  and  brightest  on  the  list  of  the  great  men  of  South 
Carolina.]: 

ARTICLES    OF    THE    CONFEDERATION". 

]STot  only  was  the  Declaration  of  Independence  made  in  the 
name  of  the  one  people  of  the  United  States,  but  the  war  by  which 
it  was  sustained  was  carried  on  by  their  authority.  A  VITV  grave 


*  Bnrke's  account  of"  the  English  Settlements  in  America"  begins  with  Jamaica, 
and  proceeds  through  the  West  India  Islands.  Tliere  were  also  English  settle 
ments  on  the  continent— Canada  and  Nova  Scotia  — which  it  was  necessary  to 
exi-.luile  from  the  treaty,  by  an  enumeration  of  the  inc' tided  colonies. 

t  Elliott's  Debutes,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  801. 

t  See  an  admirable  sketch  of  his  character  in  Trescot's  Diplomatic  History  of  the 
Administrations  of  Washington  and  Adams,  pp.  1G9  71. 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY.  245 


historical  error,  in  this  respect,  is  often  committed  by  the  poli 
ticians  of  the  secession  school.  Mr.  Davis,  in  his  message  of  the 
29th  of  April,  having  called  the  old  confederation  u  a  close  alli 
ance,"  says,  "  under  this  contract  of  alliance  the  war  of  the  Revo 
lution  was  successfully  waged,  and  resulted  in  the  treaty  of  peace 
with  Great  Britain  of  1783,  by  the  terms  of  which  the  several 
States  were  each  by  name  recognized  to  be  independent."  I  have 
already  given  the  reason  for  this  enumeration,  but  the  main  fact 
alleged  in  the  passage  is  entirely  without  foundation.  The  articles 
of  confederation  were  first  signed  by  the  delegates  from  eight  of 
the  States  on  the  9th  of  July,  1778,  more  than  three  years  after 
the  commencement  of  the  war,  long  after  the  capitulation  of  Bur- 
goyne,  the  alliance  with  France,  and  the  reception  of  a  French 
minister.  The  ratification  of  the  other  States  was  given  at  inter 
vals  the  following  years,  the  last  not  till  1781,  seven  months  only 
before  the  virtual  close  of  the  war  by  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  was  '•  the  contract  of  alliance" 
consummated.  Most  true  it  is,  as  Mr.  Davis  bids  us  remark,  that 
by  these  articles  of  confederation  the  States  retained  u  each  its 
sovereignty,  freedom,  and  independence."  It  is  not  less  true  that 
their  selfish  struggle  to  exercise  and  enforce  their  assumed  rights 
as  separate  sovereignties  was  the  source  of  the  greatest  difficulties 
and  dangers  of  the  Revolution,  and  risked  its  success ;  not  less 
true,  that  most  of  the  great  powers  of  a  sovereign  State  were 
nominally  conferred  even  by  these  articles  on  the  Congress,  and 
that  that  body  was  regarded  and  spoken  of  by  Washington  himself 
as  UTIIE  SOVEREIGN  OF  THE  Uxiox."* 

But  feeble  as  the  old  confederation  was,  and  distinctly  as  it 
recognized  the  sovereignty  of  the  States,  it  recognized  in  them  no 
right  to  withdraw  at  their  pleasure  from  the  Union.  On  the  con 
trary,  it  was  specially  provided  that  "  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
should  be  inviolably  preserved  by  every  State,"  and  that  "thf 
Union  should  be  perpetual."  It  is  true  that,  in  a  few  years,  from 
the  inherent  weakness  of  the  central  power,  and  from  the  want  of 
means  to  enforce  its  authority  on  the  individual  citizen,  it  fell  to 
pieces.  It  sickened  and  died  from  the  poison  of  what  General 
Pinckney  aptly  called  u  the  heresy  of  State  sovereignty,"  and  in  its 
place  a  constitution  was  ordained  and  established,  "  in  order  to 
form  a  more  perfect  union ;"  a  union  more  binding  on  its  rnem- 

*  Sparks'  Washington,  Vol.  IX.,  pp.  12,  23,  29. 


246  THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

bers  than  this  "  contract  of  alliance,"  which  yet  was  to  be  "  invio 
lably  observed  by  every  State ;"  more  durable  than  the  old  union, 
which  yet  was  declared  to  be  "perpetual."  This  great  and  benefi 
cent  change  was  a  revolution — happily,  a  peaceful  revolution — the 
most  important  change  probably  ever  brought  about  in  a  govern 
ment  without  bloodshed.  The  new  government  was  unanimously 
adopted  by  all  the  members  of  the  old  confederation,  by  some 
more  promptly  than  by  others,  but  by  all  within  the  space  of  four 
years. 

THE  STATES  MIGHT  BE  OOEEOED  UNDER  THE  CONFEDERATION. 

Much  has  been  said  against  coercion,  that  is,  the  employment  of 
force  to  compel  obedience  to  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  when 
they  are  resisted  under  the  assumed  authority  of  a  State ;  but 
even  the  old  confederation,  with  all  its  weakness,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  most  eminent  cotemporary  statesmen,  possessed  this  power. 
Great  stress  is  laid  by  politicians  of  the  secession  school  on  the 
fact,  that  in  a  project  for  amending  the  articles  of  confederation 
brought  forward  by  Judge  Paterson  in  the  Federal  Convention,  it 
was  proposed  to  clothe  the  Government  with  this  power,  and  the 
proposal  was  not  adopted.  This  is  a  very  inaccurate  statement  of 
the  facts  of  the  case.  The  proposal  formed  part  of  a  project 
which  was  rejected  in  toto.  The  reason  why  this  power  of  State 
coercion  was  not  granted,  eo  nomine,  in  the  new  Constitution,  is, 
that  it  was  wholly  superfluous  and  inconsistent  with  the  funda 
mental  principle  of  the  Government.  Within  the  sphere  of  its 
delegated  powers,  the  general  Government  deals  with  the  individual 
citizen.  If  its  power  is  resisted,  the  person  or  persons  resisting  it 
do  so  at  their  peril,  and  are  amenable  to  the  law.  They  can  derive 
no  immunity  from  State  Legislatures  or  State  Conventions, 
because  the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the  United  States  are  the 
supreme  law  of  the  land.  If  the  resistance  assumes  an  organized 
form,  on  the  part  of  numbers  too  great  to  be  restrained  by  the 
ordinary  powers  of  the  law,  it  is  then  an  insurrection,  which  the 
general  Government  is  expressly  authorized  to  suppress.  Did  any 
one  imagine,  in  1793,  when  General  Washington  called  out  15,000 
men  to  suppress  the  insurrection  in  the  western  counties  of  Penn 
sylvania,  that  if  the  insurgents  had  happened  to  have  the  control 
of  a  majority  of  the  Legislature,  and  had  thus  been  able  to  clothe 
their  rebellion  with  a  pretended  form  of  law,  that  he  would  have 
been  obliged  to  disband  his  troops,  and  return  himself,  baffled  and 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  247 

discomfited,  to  Mount  Vernon?  If  John  Brown's  raid  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  instead  of  being  the  project  of  one  misguided  individual  and 
a  dozen  and  a  half  deluded  followers,  had  been  the  organized  move 
ment  of  the  States  of  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania,  do  the  seceders  hold 
that  the  United  States  would  have  had  no  right  to  protect  Vir 
ginia,  or  punish  the  individuals  concerned  in  her  invasion  ?  Do  the 
seceding  States  really  mean,  after  all,  to  deny  that,  if  a  State  law 
is  passed  to  prevent  the  rendition  of  a  fugitive  slave,  the  general 
Government  has  any  right  to  employ  force  to  effect  his  sur 
render  ? 

But,  as  I  have  said,  even  the  old  confederation,  with  all  its 
weakness,  was  held  by  the  ablest  cotemporary  statesmen,  and 
that  of  the  State-rights  school,  to  possess  the  power  of  enforc 
ing  its  requisitions  against  a  delinquent  State.  Mr.  Jefferson, 
in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Adams  of  the  llth  of  July,  1786,  on  the  subject 
of  providing  a  naval  force  of  150  guns  to  chastise  the  Barbary 
Powers,  urges,  as  an  additional  reason  for  such  a  step,  that  it 
would  arm  "  the  Federal  head  with  the  safest  of  all  the  instruments 
of  coercion  over  its  delinquent  members,  and  prevent  it  from  using 
what  would  be  less  safe,"  viz.,  a  land  force.  Writing  on  the  same 
subject  to  Mr.  Monroe  a  month  later  (llth  Aug.,  1786),  he  answers 
the  objection  of  expense  thus  :  "It  will  be  said,  '  There  is  no  money 
in  the  treasury.'  There  never  will  be  money  in  the  treasury  till  the 
confederacy  shows  its  teeth.  The  States  must  see  the  rod,  perhaps 
it  must  be  felt  by  some  of  them.  Every  rational  citizen  must  wish 
to  see  an  effective  instrument  of  coercion,  and  should  fear  to  see 
it  on  any  other  element  than  the  water.  A  naval  force  can  never 
endanger  our  liberties  nor  occasion  bloodshed ;  a  land  force  would 
do  both."  In  the  following  year,  and  when  the  confederation  was 
at  its  last  gasp,  Mr.  Jefferson  was  still  of  the  opinion  that  it  pos 
sessed  the  power  of  coercing  the  States,  and  that  it  was  expedient 
to  exercise  it.  In  a  letter  to  Col.  Carrington,  of  the  4th  of  April, 
1787,  he  says:  "It  has  been  so  often  said  as  to  be  generally  be 
lieved,  that  Congress  have  no  power  by  the  confederation  to  enforce 
anything — for  instance,  contributions  of  money.  It  was  not  ne 
cessary  to  give  them  that  power  expressly ;  they  have  it  by  the  law 
of  nature.  When  two  parties  make  a  compact,  there  results  to  each 
the  power  of  compelling  the  other  to  execute  it.  Compulsion  wras 
never  so  easy  as  in  our  case,  when  a  single  frigate  would  soon  levy 
on  the  commerce  of  a  single  State  the  deficiency  of  its  contribu 
tions." 


0^8  THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

Such  was  Mr.  Jefferson's  opinion  of  the  powers  of  Congress 
under  the  •'  old  contract  of  alliance."  Will  any  reasonable  man 
maintain,  that  under  a  constitution  of  government  there  can  be 
less  power  to  enforce  the  laws? 

STATE    SOYEREIGXTY    DOES    NOT    AUTHORIZE    SECESSION. 

But  the  cause  of  secession  gains  nothing  by  magnifying  the  doc 
trine  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  States,  or  calling  the  Constitution  a 
compact  between  them.  Calling  it  a  compact  does  not  change  a 
word  of  its  text,  and  no  theory  of  what  is  implied  in  the  word 
''sovereignty"  is  of  any  weight  in  opposition  to  the  actual  provi 
sions  of  the  instrument  itself.  Sovereignty  is  a  word  of  very  vari 
ous  signification.  It  is  one  thing  in  China,  another  in  Turkey,  an 
other  in  Russia,  another  in  France,  another  in  England,  another  in 
Switzerland,  another  in  San  Marino,  another  in  the  individual 
American  States,  and  it  is  something  different  from  all  in  the 
United  States.  To  maintain  that  because  the  State  of  Virginia, 
for  instance,  was  in  some  sense  or  other  a  sovereign  State  when 
her  people  adopted  the  Federal  Constitution  (which  in  terms  was 
ordained  and  established  not  only  for  the  people  of  that  day,  but 
for  their  posterity),  she  may  therefore  at  pleasure  secede  from  the 
Union  existing  under  that  Constitution,  is  simply  to  beg  the  ques 
tion.  That  question  is  not,  what  was  the  theory  or  form  of  govern 
ment  .existing  in  Virginia  before  the  Constitution,  but  what  are 
the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  which  her  people  adopted  and 
made  their  own?  Does  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  per 
mit  or  forbid  the  States  to  enter  into  a  confederation  ?  Is  it  a  mere 
^oose  partnership,  which  any  of  the  parties  can  break  up  at  plea 
sure,  or  is  it  a  Constitution  of  government,  delegating  to  Congress 
and  prohibiting  to  the  States  most  of  the  primal  functions  of  a  sov 
ereign  power :  peace,  war,  commerce,  finance,  navy,  army,  mail, 
mint;  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  functions?  The  States 
are  not  named  in  it ;  the  word  sovereignty  does  not  occur  in  it ;  the 
right  of  secession  is  as  much  ignored  in  it  as  the  precession  of  the 
equinoxes,  and  all  the  great  prerogatives  which  characterize  an  in 
dependent  member  of  the  family  of  nations  are,  by  distinct  grant, 
conferred  on  Congress  by  the  people  of  the  United  States  a,nd  pro 
hibited  to  the  individual  States  of  the  Union.  Is  it  not  the  height 
of  absurdity  to  maintain  that  all  these  express  grants,  and  distinct 
prohibitions,  and  constitutional  arrangements  may  be  set  at  naught 
by  an  individual  State,  under  the  pretense  that  she  was  a  sovereign 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY.  249 

State  before  she  assented  to  or  ratified  them  ;  in  other  words,  that 
an  act  is  of  no  binding-  force  because  it  was  performed  by  an  au 
thorized  and  competent  agent? 

In  fact,  to  deduce  from  the  sovereignty  of  the  States  the  right 
of  seceding  from  the  Union,  is  the  most  stupendous  non  seqiutur 
that  was  ever  advanced  in  grave  affairs.  The  only  legitimate  in 
ference  to  be  drawn  from  that  sovereignty  is  precisely  the  reverse. 
If  any  one  right  can  be  predicated  of  a  sovereign  State,  it  is  that 
of  forming  or  adopting  a  frame  of  government.  She  may  do  it 
alone,  or  she  may  do  it  as  a  member  of  a  union.  She  may  enter 
into  a  loose  pact  for  ten  years,  or  till  a  partisan  majority  of  a  con 
vention,  goaded  on  by  ambitious  aspirants  to  office,  shall  vote  in 
secret  session  to  dissolve  it ;  or  she  may,  after  grave  deliberation 
and  mature  counsel,  led  by  the  wisest  and  most  virtuous  of  the  land, 
ratify  and  adopt  a  constitution  of  government,  ordained  and  estab 
lished  not  only  for  that  generation,  but  their  posterity,  subject  only 
to  the  inalienable  right  of  revolution  possessed  by  every  political 
community. 

What  would  be  thought,  in  private  affairs,  of  a  man  who  should 
seriously  claim  the  right  to  revoke  a  grant,  in  consequence  of  hav 
ing  an  unqualified  right  to  make  it?  A  right  to  break  a  contract, 
because  he  had  a  right  to  enter  into  it  ?  To  what  extent  is  it  more 
rational  on  the  part  of  a  State  to  found  the  right  to  dissolve  the 
Union,  on  the  competence  of  the  parties  to  form  it — the  right  to 
prostrate  a  government,  on  the  fact  that  it  was  constitutionally 
framed  ? 

PARALLEL    CASES  :    IRELAND,    SCOTLAXD. 

But  let  us  look  at  parallel  cases,  and  they  are  by  no  means 
wanting.  In  the  year  1800  a  union  was  formed  between  England 
and  Ireland.  Ireland,  before  she  entered  into  the  union,  was  subject, 
indeed,  to  the  English  crown,  but  she  had  her  own  Parliament,  con 
sisting  of  her  own  Lords  and  Commons,  and  enacting  her  own 
laws.  In  1800  she  entered  into  a  constitutional  union  with  En 
gland  on  the  basis  of  articles  of  agreement,  jointly  accepted  by  the 
two  Parliaments.*  The  union  was  opposed  at  the  time  by  a  pow 
erful  minority  in  Ireland,  and  }Ir.  O'Connell  succeeded,  thirty 
years  later,  by  ardent  appeals  to  the  sensibilities  of  the  people,  in 
producing  an  almost  unanimous  desire  for  its  dissolution.  lie 

*  Annual  Register,  Yol.  XLIL,  p.  190. 


250  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAT. 

professed,  however,  although  lie  had  brought  his  countrymen  to 
the  verge  of  rebellion,  to  aim  at  nothing  but  a  constitutional  repeal 
of  the  articles  of  union  by  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain.  It 
never  occurred  even  to  his  fervid  imagination  that,  because  Ire 
land  was  an  independent  government  when  she  entered  into  the 
union,  it  was  competent  for  her,  at  her  discretion,  to  secede  from 
it.  What  would  our  English  friends,  who  have  learned  from  our 
secessionists  the  "  inherent  right"  of  a  disaffected  State  to  secede 
from  our  Union,  have  thought,  had  Mr.  O'Oonnell,  in  the  parox 
ysms  of  his  agitation,  claimed  the  right  on  the  part  of  Ireland,  by 
her  own  act,  to  sever  her  union  with  England  ? 

Again,  in  170G  Scotland  and  England  formed  a  constitutional 
union.  They  also,  though  subject  to  the  same  monarch,  were  in 
other  respects  sovereign  and  independent  kingdoms.  They  had 
each  its  separate  Parliament,  courts  of  justice,  laws,  and  estab 
lished  national  church.  Articles  of  union  were  established  be 
tween  them  ;  but  all  the  laws  and  statutes  of  either  kingdom  not 
contrary  to  these  articles,  remained  in  force.*  A  powerful 
minority  in  Scotland  disapproved  of  the  union  at  the  time.  Nine 
years  afterward  an  insurrection  broke  out  in  Scotland  under  a 
prince  who  claimed  to  be  the  lawful,  as  he  certainly  was  the 
lineal,  heir  to  the  throne.  The  rebellion  was  crushed,  but  the  dis 
affection  in  which  it  had  its  origin  \vas  not  wholly  appeased.  In 
thirty  years  more  a  second  Scottish  insurrection  took  place,  and,  as 
before,  under  the  lead  of  the  lineal  heir  to  the  crown.  On  neither 
occasion  that  I  ever  heard  of,  did  it  enter  into  the  imagination  of 
rebel  or  loyalist,  that  Scotland  was  acting  under  a  reserved  right 
as  a  sovereign  kingdom  to  secede  from  the  union,  or  that  the 
movement  was  anything  less  than  an  insurrection  ;  revolution  if  it 
succeeded;  treason  and  rebellion  if  it  failed.  Neither  do  I 
recollect  that,  in  less  than  a  month  after  either  insurrection  broke 
out,  any  one  of  the  friendly  and  neutral  powers  made  haste,  in 
anticipation  even  of  the  arrival  of  the  minister  of  the  reigning 
sovereign,  to  announce  that  the  rebels  "  would  be  recognized  as 
belligerents." 

VIRGINIA    VAIXLY    ATTEMPTS    TO    ESTABLISH    A    RESERVED    RIGHT. 

In  fact  it  is  so  plain,  in  the  nature  of  things,  that  there  can  be  no 
constitutional  right  to  break  up  a  government  unless  it  is  expressly 

*  Eapin's  History  of  England,  Yol.  IV.,  pp.  741-6. 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  251 

provided  for,  that  the  politicians  of  the  secession  school  are  driven 
back,  at  every  turn,  to  a  reserved  right.  I  have  already  shown 
that  there  is  no  such  express  reservation,  and  I  have  dwelt  on  the 
absurdity  of  getting,  by  implication,  &  reserved  right  to  violate 
every  express  provision  of  a  constitution.  In  this  strait,  Virginia, 
proverbially  skilled  in  logical  subtilties,  has  attempted  to  find  an 
express  reservation,  not,  of  course,  in  the  Constitution  itself,  where 
it  does  not  exist,  but  in  her  original  act  of  adhesion,  or  rather  in  the 
declaration  of  the  "  impressions"  under  which  that  act  was 
adopted.  The  ratification  itself  of  Virginia  was  positive  and  un 
conditional.  "  We,  the  said  delegates,  in  the  name  and  behalf  of 
the  People  of  Virginia,  do  by  these  presents  assent  to  and  ratify 
the  Constitution  recommended  on  the  17th  day  of  September, 
1787,  by  the  Federal  Convention,  for  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  hereby  announcing  to  all  those  whom  it  may  concern,  that 
the  said  Constitution  is  binding  upon  the  said  people,  according  to 
an  authentic  copy  hereunto  annexed.  Done  in  Convention  this 
26th  day  of  June,  1788." 

This,  as  you  perceive,  is  an  absolute  and  unconditional  ratifica 
tion  of  the  Constitution  by  the  people  of  Virginia.  An  attempt, 
however,  is  made  by  the  late  Convention  in  Virginia,  in  their  ordi 
nance  of  secession,  to  extract  a  reservation  of  a  right  to  secede, 
out  of  a  declaration  contained  in  the  preamble  to  the  act  of 
ratification.  That  preamble  declares  it  to  be  an  "impression"  of 
the  people  of  Virginia,  that  the  powers  granted  under  the  Consti 
tution,  being  derived  from  the  people  of  the  United  States,  may  be 
resumed  BY  THEM,  whenever  the  same  shall  be  perverted  to  their 
injury  or  oppression.  The  ordinance  of  secession,  passed  by  the 
recent  Convention,  purporting  to  cite  this  declaration,  omits  the 
words  l)y  them,  that  is,  by  the  people  of  the  United  States,  not  by 
the  people  of  any  single  State,  thus  arrogating  to  the  people  of 
Virginia  alone  what  the  Convention  of  1788  claimed  only,  and 
that  by  way  of  "  impression,"  for  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

By  this  most  grave  omission  of  the  vital  words  of  the  sentence, 
the  Convention,  I  fear,  intended  to  lead  the  incautious  or  the 
ignorant  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  Convention  of  1788  asserted 
the  right  of  an  individual  State  to  resume  the  powers  granted  in 
the  Constitution  to  the  general  Government ;  a  claim  for  which 
there  is  riot  the  slightest  foundation  in  constitutional  history.  On 
the  contrary,  when  the  ill-omened  doctrine  of  State  nullification 
was  sought  to  be  sustained  by  the  same  argument  in  1830,  and  the 


950  THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

famous  Virginia  resolutions  of  1798  were  appealed  to  by  Mr.  Cal- 
lioun  and  his  friends,  as  affording  countenance  to  that  doctrine,  it 
was  repeatedly  and  emphatically  declared  by  Mr.  Madison,  the  author 
of  the  resolutions,  that  they  were  intended  to  claim,  not  for  an  indi 
vidual  State,  but  for  the  United  States,  by  whom  the  Constitution 
was  ordained  and  established,  the  right  of  remedying  its  abuses  by 
constitutional  ways,  such  as  united  protest,  repeal,  or  an  amend 
ment  of  the  Constitution.*  Incidentally  to  the  discussion  of 
nullification,  he  denied  over  and  over  again  the  right  of  peaceable 
secession ;  and  this  fact  was  well  known  to  some  of  the  members 
of  the  late  Convention  at  Richmond.  When  the  secrets  of  their 
assembly  are  laid  open,  no  doubt  it  will  appear  that  there  were 
some  faithful  Abdiels  to  proclaim  the  fact.  O  that  the  venerable 
sage,  second  to  none  of  his  patriot  compeers  in  framing  the  Con 
stitution  ;  the  equal  associate  of  Hamilton  in  recommending  it  to 
the  people ;  its  great  champion  in  the  Virginia  Convention  of 
1788,  and  its  faithful  vindicator  in  1830,  against  the  deleterious 
heresy  of  nullification,  could  have  been  spared  to  protect  it,  at  the 
present  day,  from  the  still  deadlier  venom  of  secession  !  But  he  is 
gone ;  the  principles,  the  traditions,  and  the  illustrious  memories 
which  gave  to  Virginia  her  name  and  her  praise  in  the  land  are  no 
longer  cherished ;  the  work  of  Washington,  and  Madison,  and 
Randolph,  and  Pendleton,  and  Marshall  is  repudiated,  and  ISTullifiers, 
Precipitators  and  Seceders  gather  in  secret  conclave  to  destroy  the 
Constitution,  in  the  very  building  that  holds  the  monumental 
statue  of  the  Father  of  his  Country ! 

THE    VIRGINIA    RESOLUTIONS    OF    1798. 

Having  had  occasion  to  allude  to  the  Virginia  resolutions  of 
1798,  I  may  observe  that  of  these  famous  resolves,  the  subject  of 
so  much  political  romance,  it  is  time  that  a  little  plain  truth  should 
be  promulgated.  The  country  in  1798  was  vehemently  agitated 
by  the  struggles  of  the  domestic  parties  which  about  equally 
divided  it,  and  these  struggles  were  urged  to  unwonted  and  ex 
treme  bitterness  by  the  preparations  made  and  making  for  a  war 
with  France.  By  an  act  of  Congress  passed  in  the  summer  of  that 
year,  the  President  of  the  United  States  was  clothed  with  power 
to  send  from  the  country  any  alien  whom  he  might  judge  dangerous 
to  the  public  peace  and  safety,  or  who  should  be  concerned  in  any 

*  Maguire's  Collection,  p.  213. 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY.  253 

treasonable  or  secret  machinations  against  the  Government  of  the 
United  States.  This  act  was  passed  as  a  war  measure  ;  it  was  to 
be  in  force  two  years,  and  it  expired  by  its  own  limitation  on  the 
25th  of  June,  1800.  War,  it  is  true,  had  not  been  formally  de 
clared  ;  but  hostilities  on  the  ocean  had  taken  place  on  both  sides, 
and  the  army  of  the  United  States  had  been  placed  upon  a  war 
footing.  The  measure  was  certainly  within  the  war  power,  and 
one  which  no  prudent  commander,  even  without  the  authority  of 
a  statute,  would  hesitate  to  execute  in  an  urgent  case  within  his 
own  district.  Congress  thought  fit  to  provide  for  and  regulate  its 
exercise  by  law. 

Two  or  three  weeks  later  (14th  July,  1798),  another  law  was 
enacted,  making  it  penal  to  combine  or  conspire  with  intent  to 
oppose  any  lawful  measure  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  or  to  write,  print,  or  publish,  any  false  and  scandalous 
writing  against  the  Government,  either  House  of  Congress,  or  the 
President  of  the  United  States.  In  prosecutions  under  this  law  it 
was  provided  that  the  truth  might  be  pleaded  in  justification,  and 
that  the  jury  should  be  judges  of  the  law  as  well  as  of  the  fact. 
This  law  was,  by  its  own  limitation,  to  expire  at  the  close  of  the 
then  current  Presidential  term. 

Such  are  the  famous  alien  and  sedition  laws  passed  under  the 
administration  of  that  noble  and  true-hearted  revolutionary 
patriot,  John  Adams,  though  not  recommended  by  him  officially 
or  privately;  adjudged  to  be  constitutional  by  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States ;  distinctly  approved  by  Washington,  Patrick 
Henry,  and  Marshall ;  and,  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  them, 
certainly  preferable  to  the  laws  which,  throughout  the  seceding 
States,  Judge  Lynch  would  not  fail  to  enforce  at  the  lamp-post  and 
tar-bucket  against  any  person  guilty  of  the  offenses  against  which 
these  statutes  are  aimed. 

It  suited,  however,  the  purposes  of  party  at  that  time  to  raise  a 
formidable  clamor  against  these  laws.  It  was  in  vain  that  their 
constitutionality  was  affirmed  by  the  judiciary  of  the  United  States. 
a  Nothing,"  said  Washington,  alluding  to  these  laws,  "  will  produce 
the  least  change  in  the  conduct  of  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  to 
the  measures  of  the  general  Government.  They  have  points  to 
carry  from  which  no  reasoning,  no  inconsistency  of  conduct,  no 
absurdity  can  divert  them."  Such,  in  the  opinion  of  Washington, 
was  the  object  for  which  the  legislatures  of  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
passed  their  famous  resolutions  of  1798,  the  former  drafted  by  Mr. 


254  THE   QUESTIONS  OF   THE   DAY. 

Madison,  and  the  latter  by  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  sent  to  a  friend  in 
Kentucky  to  be  brought  forward.  These  resolutions  were  trans 
mitted  to  the  other  States  for  their  concurrence.  The  replies  from 
the  States  which  made  any  response  were  referred  the  following 
year  to  committees  in  Virginia  and  Kentucky.  In  the  Legislature 
of  Virginia  an  elaborate  report  was  made  by  Mr.  Madison,  explain 
ing  and  defending  the  resolutions;  in  Kentucky,  another  resolve 
re-affirming  those  of  the  preceding  year  was  drafted  by  Mr.  Wilson 
Gary  Nicholas — not  by  Mr.  Jefferson,  as  stated  by  Gen.  McDuffie. 
Our  respect  for  the  distinguished  men  who  took  the  lead  on  this 
occasion,  then  ardently  engaged  in  the  warfare  of  politics,  must  not 
make  us  fear  to  tell  the  truth,  that  the  simple  object  of  the  entire 
movement  was  to  make  u  political  capital"  for  the  approaching 
election,  by  holding  up  to  the  excited  imaginations  of  the  masses 
the  alien  and  sedition  laws  as  an  infraction  of  the  Constitution 
which  threatened  the  overthrow  of  the  liberties  of  the  people. 
The  resolutions  maintained  that  the  States,  being  parties  to  the 
constitutional  compact,  in  a  case  of  deliberate,  palpable,  and  dan 
gerous  exercise  of  powers  not  granted  by  the  compact,  have  a  right 
and  are  in  duty  bound  to  interpose  for  preventing  the  progress  of 
the  evil. 

Such,  in  brief,  was  the  main  purport  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
resolutions.  The  sort  of  interposition  intended  was  left  in  studied 
obscurity.  Not  a  word  was  dropped  of  secession  from  the  Union. 
Mr.  Nicholas'  resolution  in  1799  hinted  at  "  nullification"  as  the 
appropriate  remedy  for  an  unconstitutional  law,  but  what  was 
meant  by  the  ill-sounding  word  was  not  explained.  The  words 
"null,  void,  and  of  no  effect,"  contained  in  the  original  draft  of  the 
Virginia  resolutions,  were,  on  motion  of  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline, 
stricken  from  them,  on  their  passage  through  the  Assembly ;  and 
Mr.  Madison,  in  his  report  of  1799,  carefully  explains  that  no  extra 
constitutional  measures  were  intended.  One  of  the  Kentucky  reso 
lutions  ends  with  an  invitation  to  the  States  to  unite  in  a  petition 
to  Congress  to  repeal  the  laws. 

These  resolutions  were  communicated,  as  I  have  said,  to  the  other 
States  for  concurrence.  From  most  of  them  no  response  was  re 
ceived;  some  adopted  dissenting  reports  and  resolutions;  NOT  ONE 
coNcuuuKi).  But  the  resolutions  did  their  work — all  that  they 
were  intended  or  expected  to  do — by  shaking  the  administration. 
At  the  ensuing  election,  Mr.  Jefferson,  at  whose  instance  the  entire 
movement  was  ma  le,  was  chosen  President  by  a  very  small 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY.  255 

majority ;  Mr.  Madison  was  placed  at  the  head  of  his  administration 
as  secretary  of  state;  the  obnoxious  laws  expired  by  their  own 
limitation,  not  repealed  by  the  dominant  party,  as  Mr.  Calhoun 
with  strange  inadvertence  asserts  ;*  and  Mr.  Jefferson  proceeded 
to  administer  the  Government  upon  constitutional  principles  quite 
as  lax,  to  say  the  least,  as  those  of  his  predecessors.  If  there  was 
any  marked  departure  in  his  general  policy  from  the  course  hitherto 
pursued,  it  was  that,  having  some  theoretical  prejudices  against  a 
navy,  he  allowed  that  branch  of  the  service  to  languish.  By  no 
administration  have  the  powers  of  the  general  Government  been 
more  liberally  construed — not  to  say  further  strained — sometimes 
beneficially,  as  in  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana — sometimes  perni 
ciously,  as  in  the  embargo.  The  resolutions  of  1798  and  the  meta 
physics  they  inculcated  were  surrendered  to  the  cobwebs,  which 
habitually  await  the  plausible  exaggerations  of  the  canvass  after  an 
election  is  decided.  These  resolutions  of  1798  have  been  sometimes 
in  Virginia  waked  from  their  slumbers  at  closely  contested  elections 
as  a  party  cry ;  the  report  of  the  Hartford  Convention,  without 
citing  them  by  name,  borrows  their  language ;  but  as  representing 
in  their  modern  interpretation  any  system  on  which  the  Govern 
ment  ever  was  or  could  be  administered,  they  were  buried  in  the 
same  grave  as  the  laws  which  called  them  forth. 

Unhappily  during  their  transient  vitality,  like  the  butterfly 
which  deposits  its  egg  in  the  apple-blossoms  that  have  so  lately 
filled  our  orchards  with  beauty  and  perfume — a  gilded,  harmless 
moth,  whose  food  is  a  dew-drop,  whose  life  is  a  midsummer's  day 
— these  resolutions,  misconceived  and  perverted,  proved  in  the 
minds  of  ambitious  and  reckless  politicians  the  germ  of  a  fatal 
heresy.  The  butterfly's  egg  is  a  microscopic  speck,  but  as  the 
fruit  grows,  the  little  speck  gives  life  to  a  greedy  and  nauseous 
worm,  that  gnaws  and  bores  to  the  heart  of  the  apple,  and  renders 
it,  though  smooth  and  fair  without,  foul  and  bitter  and  rotten 
within.  In  like  manner  the  theoretical  generalities  of  these  reso 
lutions,  intending  nothing  in  the  minds  of  their  authors  but  con 
stitutional  efforts  to  procure  the  repeal  of  obnoxious  laws,  matured 
in  the  minds  of  a  later  generation  into  the  deadly  paradoxes  of  1&30 
and  18GO — kindred  products  of  the  same  soil,  venenorom  ferax — the 
one  asserting  the  monstrous  absurdity  that  a  State,  though  remain 
ing  in  the  Union,  could  by  her  single  act  nullify  a  law  of  Congress 


\tj\> 
:he 
in-\ 

ss; 


*  Calhoun's  Discourse  on  the  Constitution,  \;  869. 


256  THE  QUESTIONS   OF   THE  DAY. 

the  other  teaching  the  still  more  preposterous  doctrine,  that  a 
single  State  may  nullity  the  Constitution.  The  first  of  these  here 
sies  tailed  to  spread  far  beyond  the  latitude  where  it  was  engen 
dered.  In  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  the  great  acuteness  of 
its  inventor  (Mr.  Calhoun),  then  the  Vice-President,  and  the 
accomplished  rhetoric  of  its  champion  (Mr.  Hayne),  failed  to  raise 
it  above  the  level  of  a  plausible  sophism.  It  sunk  forever  dis 
credited  beneath  the  sturdy  common  sense  and  indomitable  will  of 
Jackson,  the  mature  wisdom  of  Livingston,  the  keen  analysis  of 
Clay,  and  the  crushing  logic  of  Webster. 

Nor  was  this  all.  The  venerable  author  of  the  resolutions  of 
1798  and  of  the  report  of  1799  was  still  living  in  a  green  old  age. 
His  connection  with  those  state  papers  and,  still  more,  his  large 
participation  in  the  formation  and  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
entitled  him,  beyond  all  men  living,  to  be  consulted  on  the  subject. 
No  effort  was  spared  by  the  leaders  of  the  nullification  school  to 
draw  from  him  even  a  qualified  assent  to  their  theories.  But  in 
vain.  He  not  only  refused  to  admit  their  soundness,  but  he 
devoted  his  time  and  energies  for  three  laborious  years  to  the  prep 
aration  of  essays  and  letters,  of  which  the  object  was  to  demonstrate 
that  his  resolutions  and  report  did  not,  and  could  not,  bear  the 
Carolina  interpretation,  lie  earnestly  maintained  that  the  separate 
action  of  an  individual  State  was  not  contemplated  by  them,  and 
that  they  had  in  view  nothing  but  the  concerted  action  of  the 
States  to  procure  the  repeal  of  unconstitutional  laws  or  an  amend 
ment  of  the  Constitution.* 

With  one  such  letter  written  with  this  intent,  I  was  myself  hon 
ored.  It  filled  ten  pages  of  the  journal  in  which,  with  his  permis 
sion,  it  was  published.  It  unfolded  the  true  theory  of  the  Consti 
tution  and  the  meaning  and  design  of  the  resolutions,  and  exposed 
the  false  gloss  attempted  to  be  placed  upon  them  by  the  nullifiers, 
with  a  clearness  and  force  of  reasoning  which  defied  refutation. 
None,  to  my  knowledge,  was  ever  attempted.  The  politicians  of 
the  nullification  and  secession  schools,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  have 
from  that  day  to  this  made  no  attempt  to  grapple  with  Mr.  Madison's 
letter  of  August,  1830  t  Mr.  Calhoun  certainly  made  no  such 
attempt  in  the  elaborate  treatise  composed  by  him,  mainly  for  the 

*  A  very  considerable  portion  of  the  important  volume  containing  a  selection 
from  the  Madison  Papers,  and  printed  "  exclusively  for  private  distribution,"  by 
•J.  C.  McGuire,  Esq.,  in  1853,  is  taken  up  with  these  letters  and  essays. 

t  Forth  Am  eric   n  R  view,  Vol.  XXXI.,  p.  58T. 


THE  QUESTIONS  OP   THE   DAY.  257 

purpose  of  expounding  the  doctrine  of  nullification.  He  claims 
the  support  of  these  resolutions,  without  adverting  to  the  fact  that 
his  interpretation  of  them  had  been  repudiated  by  their  illustrious 
author.  He  repeats  his  exploded  paradoxes  as  confidently  as  if 
Mr.  Madison  himself  had  expired  with  the  alien  and  sedition  laws 
and  left  no  testimony  to  the  meaning  of  his  resolutions ;  while,  at 
the  present  day,  with  equal  confidence,  the  same  resolutions  are 
appealed  to  by  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Calhoun  as  sustaining  the  doc 
trine  of  secession,  in  the  face  of  the  positive  declaration  of  their 
author,  when  that  doctrine  was  first  timidly  broached,  that  they 
will  bear  no  such  interpretation. 

ME.     CALIIOUX    DID     NOT     CLAIM    A     CONSTITUTIONAL    EIGHT    OF 

SECESSION. 

In  this  respect  the  disciples  have  gone  beyond  the  master.  There 
is  a  single  sentence  in  Mr.  Calhoun's  elaborate  volume  in  which  he 
maintains  the  right  of  a  State  to  secede  from  the  Union.  (Page 
301.)  There  is  reason  to  suppose,  however,  that  he  intended  to 
claim  only  the  inalienable  right  of  revolution.  In  1828  a  declara 
tion  of  political  principles  was  drawn  up  by  him  for  the  State  of 
South  Carolina,  in  which  it  was  expressly  taught  that  the  people 
of  that  State,  by  adopting  the  Federal  Constitution,  had  u  modified 
its  original  right  of  sovereignty,  whereby  its  individual  consent 
was  necessary  to  any  change  in  its  political  condition,  and  by  be 
coming  a  member  of  the  Union,  had  placed  that  power  in  the 
hands  of  three  fourths  of  the  States  [the  number  necessary  for  a 
constitutional  amendment],  in  whom  the  highest  power  known  to 
the  Constitution  actually  resides."  In  a  recent  patriotic  speech 
of  Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson,  at  Frederick,  Md.,  on  the  7th  of  May,  the 
distinct  authority  of  Mr.  Calhoun  is  quoted  as  late  as  1844  against 
the  right  of  separate"  action  on  the  part  of  an  individual  State,  and 
I  am  assured  by  the  same  respected  gentleman  that  it  is  within  his 
personal  knowledge  that  Mr.  Calhoun  did  not  maintain  the  peace 
ful  right  of  secession.* 

SECESSION    AS    A    EEVOLUTION. 

But  it  may  be  thought  a  waste  of  time  to  argue  against  a  con 
stitutional  right  of  peaceful  secession,  since  no  one  denies  the  right 
of  revolution  ;  and  no  pains  are  spared  by  the  disaffected  leaders, 
while  they  claim,  indeed,  the  constitutional  right,  to  represent  tneir 

*  See  Appendix  B. 


258  TIIE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE   DAY. 

movement  as  the  uprising  of  an  indignant  people  against  an  op 
pressive  and  tyrannical  government. 

IS    THE    GOVERNMENT    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES    OPPRESSIVE   AND 
TYRANNICAL  ? 

An  oppressive  and  tyrannical  government !  Let  us  examine  this 
pretense  for  a  few  moments,  first  in  the  general  and  then  in  the 
detail  of  its  alleged  tyrannies  and  abuses. 

This  oppressive  and  tyrannical  government  is  the  successful  so 
lution  of  a  problem  which  had  tasked  the  sagacity  of  mankind 
from  the  dawn  of  civilization,  viz.,  to  find  a  form  of  polity  by 
•which  institutions  purely  popular  could  be  extended  over  a  vast 
empire,  free  alike  from  despotic  centralization  and  undue  prepon 
derance  of  the  local  powers.  It  was  necessarily  a  complex  sys 
tem — a  union  at  once  federal  and  national.  It  leaves  to  the  sep- 
/  arate  States  the  control  of  all  matters  of  purely  local  administration, 
and  confides  to  the  central  power  the  management  of  foreign  affairs 
and  of  all  other  concerns  in  which  the  united  family  have  a  joint 
interest.  All  the  organized  and  delegated  powers  depend  directly, 
or  very  nearly  so,  on  popular  choice.  This  government  was  not 
imposed  upon  the  people  by  a  foreign  conqueror ;  it  is  not  an  in 
heritance  descending  from  barbarous  ages,  laden  with  traditionary 
abuses,  which  create  a  painful,  ever-recurring  necessity  of  reform  ; 
it  is  not  the  conceit  of  heated  enthusiasts  in  the  spasms  of  a  revo 
lution.  It  is  the  recent  and  voluntary  framework  of  an  enlight 
ened  age,  compacted  by  wise  and  good  men  with  deliberation  and 
care,  working  upon  materials  prepared  by  long  colonial  discipline. 
In  framing  it  they  sought  to  combine  the  merits  and  to  avoid  the 
defects  of  former  systems  of  government.  The  greatest  possible 
liberty  of  the  citizen  is  the  basis  ;  just  representation  the  ruling 
principle,  reconciling  with  rare  ingenuity  the  federal  equality  of  the 
States  with  the  proportionate  influence  of  numbers.  Its  legis 
lative  and  executive  magistrates  are  freely  chosen  at  short  periods, 
its  judiciary  alone  holding  office  by  a  more  permanent,  but  still 
sufficiently  responsible,  tenure.  ISTo  money  flows  into  or  out  of  the 
treasury  but  under  the  direct  sanction  of  the  representatives  of  the 
people,  on  whom  also  all  the  great  functions  of  government  for 
peace  and  war,  within  the  limits  already  indicated,  are  devolved, 
^o  hereditary  titles  or  privileges,  no  distinction  of  ranks,  no  es 
tablished  church,  no  courts  of  high  commission,  no  censorship  of 
the  press,  are  known  to  the  system  ;  not  a  drop  of  blood  has  ever 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY.  259 

flowed  under  its  authority  for  a  political  offense ;  but  this  tyran 
nical  and  oppressive  government  has  certainly  exhibited  a  more 
perfect  development  of  equal  republican  principles  than  has  ever 
before  existed  on  any  considerable  scale.  Under  its  benign  influ 
ence  the  country,  every  part  of  the  country,  has  prospered  beyond 
all  former  example.  Its  population  has  increased ;  its  commerce, 
agriculture,  and  manufactures  have  flourished;  manners,  arts,  ed 
ucation,  letters,  all  that  dignifies  and  ennobles  man,  have  in  a 
shorter  period  attained  a  higher  point  of  cultivation  than  has  ever 
before  been  witnessed  in  a  newly  settled  region.  The  consequences 
have  been,  consideration  and  influence  abroad  and  marvelous  well- 
being  at  home.  The  world  has  looked  with  admiration  upon  the 
country's  progress ;  we  have  ourselves  contemplated  it  perhaps 
with  undue  self-complacency.  Armies  without  conscription ;  na 
vies  without  impressment,  and  neither  army  nor  navy  swelled  to 
an  oppressive  size ;  an  overflowing  treasury  without  direct  taxa 
tion,  or  oppressive  taxation  of  any  kind  ;  churches  without  number, 
and  with  no  denominational  preferences  on  the  part  of  the  State  ; 
schools  and  colleges  accessible  to  all  the  people ;  a  free  and  a 
cheap  press  ;  all  the  great  institutions  of  social  life  extending  their 
benefits  to  the  mass  of  the  community.  Such,  no  one  can  deny,  is 
the  general  character  of  this  oppressive  and  tyrannical  government. 
But  perhaps  this  government,  however  wisely  planned,  however 
beneficial  even  in  its  operation,  may  have  been  rendered  distaste 
ful,  or  may  have  become  oppressive  in  one  part  of  the'country  and 
to  one  portion  of  the  people,  in  consequence  of  the  control  of  affairs 
having  been  monopolized  or  unequally  shared  by  another  portion. 
In  a  confederacy  the  people  of  one  section,  are  not  well  pleased  to 
be  even  mildly  governed  by  an  exclusive  domination  of  the  other. 
In  point  of  fact,  this  is  the  allegation,  the  persistent  allegation  of 
the  South,  that  from  the  foundation  of  the  government  it  has  been 
wielded  by  the  people  of  the  North  for  their  special,  often  ex 
clusive,  benefit,  and  to  the  injury  and  oppression  of  the  South.  Let 
us  see.  Out  of  seventy-two  years  since  the  organization  of  the 
government,  the  Executive  chair  has  for  sixty-four  years  been 
filled  nearly  all  the  time  by  Southern  Presidents,  and  when  that 
was  not  the  case,  by  Presidents  possessing  the  confidence  of  the 
South.  For  a  still  longer  period  the  controlling  influences  of  the 
legislative  and  judicial  departments  of  the  government  have  cen 
tered  in  the  same  quarter.  Of  all  the  offices  in  the  gift  of  the  cen 
tral  power  in  every  department,  far  more  than  her  proportionate 


260  THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE   DAY. 

share  has  always  been  enjoyed  by  the  South.  She  is  at  this  mo 
ment  revolting  against  a  government  not  only  admitted  to  be  the 
mildest  and  most  beneficent  ever  organized  this  side  Utopia,  but 
one  of  which  she  has  herself  from  the  first  almost  monopolized  the 
administration. 

CAUSE    OF  THE    EEVOLUTION    ALLEGED    BY    SOUTH    CAEOLINA. 

But  are  there  no  wrongs,  abuses,  and  oppressions,  alleged  to 
have  been  suffered  by  the  South,  which  have  rendered  her  longer 
submission  to  the  Federal  Government  intolerable,  and  which  are 
pleaded  as  the  motive  and  justification  of  the  revolt  ?  Of  course 
there  are,  but  with  such  variation  and  uncertainty  of  statement  as  to 
render  their  examination  difficult.  The  manifesto  of  South  Carolina, 
of  the  20th  of  Dec.  last,  which  led  the  way  in  this  inauspicious  move 
ment,  sets  forth  nothing  but  the  passage  of  State  laws  to  obstruct 
the  surrender  of  fugitive  slaves.  The  document  does  not  state  that 
South  Carolina  herself  ever  lost  a  slave  in  consequence  of  these 
laws ;  it  is  not  probable  she  ever  did  ;  and  yet  she  makes  the  ex 
istence  of  these  laws,  which  are  wholly  inoperative,  as  far  as  she 
is  concerned,  and  which  probably  never  caused  to  the  entire  South 
the  loss  of  a  dozen  fugitives,  the  ground  for  breaking  up  the  Union 
and  plunging  the  country  into  a  civil  war.  But  I  shall  presently 
revert  to  this  topic. 

Other  statements  in  other  quarters  enlarge  the  list  of  grievances. 
In  the  month  of  November  last,  after  the  result  of  the"  Presiden 
tial  election  was  ascertained,  a  very  interesting  discussion  of  the 
subject  of  secession  took  place  atMilledgeville,  before  the  members 
of  the  Legislature  of  Georgia  and  the  citizens  generally,  between 
two  gentlemen  of  great  ability  and  eminence,  since  elected,  the 
one  Secretary  of  State,  the  other  Vice-president  of  the  new  Con 
federacy  ;  the  former  urging  the  necessity  and  duty  of  immediate 
secession;  the  latter  opposing  it.  I  take  the  grievances  and 
abuses  of  the  Federal  Government,  which  the  South  has  suffered 
at  the  hands  of  the  North,  and  which  were  urged  by  the  former 
speaker  as  the  grounds  of  secession,  as  I  find  them  stated  and,  to 
some  extent,  answered,  by  his  friend  and  fellow-citizen  (then 
opposed  to  secession),  according  to  the  report  in  the  Milledgeville 
papers. 

CAUSES   ALLEGED    BY    GEOEGIA-— THE    FISHING-BOUNTIES. 

And  what,  think  you,  was  the  grievance  in  the  front  rank  of 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF   THE  DAY.  %Q\ 

those  oppressions  on  the  part  of  the  North  which  have  driven  the 
long-suffering  and  patient  South  to  open  rebellion  against  "  the  hest 
government  that  the  history  of  the  world  gives  any  account  of?" 
It  was  not  that  upon  which  the  Convention  of  South  Carolina  relied. 
You  will  hardly  believe  it — posterity  will  surely  not  believe  it. 
"  We  listened,"  said  Mr.  Vice-President  Stephens,  in  his  reply,  "  to 
my  honorable  friend,  last  night  (Mr.  Toombs),  as  he  recounted  the 
evils  of  this  Government.  The  first  was  the  fishing -bounties,  paid 
mostly  to  the  sailors  of  New  England.'1'1  The  bounty  paid  by  the 
Federal  Government  to  encourage  the  deep-sea  fisheries  of  the 
United  States ! 

You  are  aware  that  this  laborious  branch  of  industry  has,  by  all 
maritime  states,  been  ever  regarded  with  special  favor  as  the 
nursery  of  naval  power.  The  fisheries  of  the  American  colonies, 
before  the  American  Revolution,  drew  from  Burke  one  of  the  most 
gorgeous  bursts  of  eloquence  in  our  language— in  any  language. 
They  were  all  but  annihilated  by  the  Revolution  ;  but  they  fur 
nished  the  men  who  followed  Manly,  and  Tucker,  and  Biddle,  and 
Paul  Jones,  to  the  jaws  of  death.  Reviving  after  the  war,  they 
attracted  the  notice  of  the  first  Congress,  and  were  recommended 
to  their  favor  by  Mr.  Jefferson,  then  secretary  of  state.  This 
favor  was  at  first  extended  to  them  in  the  shape  of  a  drawback  of 
the  duty  on  the  various  imported  articles  employed  in  the  building 
and  outfit  of  the  vessels,  and  on  the  foreign  salt  used  in  preserving 
the  fish.  The  complexity  of  this  arrangement  led  to  the  substitu 
tion,  at  first,  of  a  certain  bounty  on  the  quantity  of  the  fish 
exported ;  afterward,  on  the  tonnage  of  the  vessels  employed  in 
the  fisheries.  All  administrations  have  concurred  in  the  measure  ; 
Presidents  of  all  parties — though  there  has  not  been  much  variety 
of  party  in  that  office — have  approved  the  appropriations.  If  the 
North  had  a  local  interest  in  these  bounties,  the  South  got  the 
principal  food  of  her  laboring  population  so  much  the  cheaper ; 
and  she  had  her  common  share  in  the  protection  which  the  navy 
afforded  her  coasts,  and  in  the  glory  which  it  shed  on  the  flag  of 
the  country.  But  since,  unfortunately,  the  deep-sea  fisheries  do 
not  exist  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  nor,  as  in  the  "  age  of  Pyrrha,"  on 
the  top  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  it  has  been  discovered,  of  late  years, 
that  these  bounties  are  a  violation  of  the  Constitution — a  largess 
bestowed  by  the  common  treasury  on  one  section  of  the  country, 
and  not  shared  by  the  other — one  of  the  hundred  ways,  in  a  word, 
in  which  the  rapacious  North  is  fattening  upon  the  oppressed  and 


062  TIIE  QUESTIONS  °F  THE  DAY- 

pillaged  South.  You  will  naturally  wish  to  know  the  amount  of 
this  tyrannical  and  oppressive  bounty.  It  is  stated  by  a  Senator 
from  Alabama  (Mr.  Clay),  who  has  warred  against  it  with  perse 
verance  and  zeal,  and  succeeded  in  the  last  Congress  in  carrying  a 
bill  through  the  Senate  for  its  repeal,  to  have  amounted,  on  the 
average,  to  an  annual  sum  of  $200,005  !  Such  is  the  portentous 
grievance  which  in  Georgia  stands  at  the  head  of  the  acts  of 
oppression,  for  which,  although  repealed  in  one  branch  of  Congress, 
the  Union  is  to  be  broken  up  and  the  country  desolated  by  war. 
Switzerland  revolted  because  an  Austrian  tyrant  invaded  the 
sanctity  of  her  firesides,  crushed  out  the  eyes  of  aged  patriots,  and 
compelled  her  fathers  to  shoot  apples  from  the  heads  of  her  sons  ; 
the  Low  Countries  revolted  against  the  fires  of  the  Inquisition  and 
the  infernal  cruelties  of  Alva ;  our  fathers  revolted  because  they 
were  taxed  by  a  Parliament  in  which  they  were  not  represented  ; 
the  cotton  States  revolt  because  a  paltry  subvention  is  paid  to 
the  hardy  fishermen  who  form  the  nerve  and  muscle  of  the  Amer 
ican  navy. 

But  it  is  not,  we  shall  be  told,  the  amount  of  the  bounty,  but 
the  principle,  as  our  fathers  revolted  against  a  three-penny  tax  on 
tea.  But  that  was  because  it  was  laid  by  a  Parliament  in  which 
the  colonies  were  not  represented,  and  which  yet  claimed  the  right 
to  bind  them  in  all  cases.  The  fishing- bounty  is  bestowed  by  a 
Government  which  has  been  from  the  first  controlled  by  the 
South.  Then  how  unreasonable  to  expect  or  to  wish  that,  in  a 
country  so  vast  as  ours,  no  public  expenditure  should  be  made  for 
the  immediate  benefit  of  one  part  or  one  interest,  that  can  not  b3 
identically  repeated  in  every  other.  A  liberal  policy,  or,  rather, 
the  necessity  of  the  case,  demands  that  what  the  public  good,  upon 
the  whole,  requires,  should,  under  constitutional  limitations,  be 
done  where  it  is  required,  offsetting  the  local  benefit  which  may 
accrue  from  the  expenditure  made  in  one  place  and  for  one  object, 
with  the  local  benefit  from  the  same  source,  in  some  other  place 
for  some  other  object.  More  money  was  expended  by  the  United 
States  in  removing  the  Indians  from  Georgia;  eight  or  ten  times 
as  much  was  expended  for  the  same  object  in  Florida,  as  lias  been 
paid  for  fishing-bounties  in  seventy  years.  For  the  last  year,  to 
IMV  for  the  expense  of  the  post-office  in  the  seceding  States, 
and  enable  our  fellow-citizens  there  to  enjoy  the  comforts  of  a 
newspaper  and  letter  mail  to  the  same  extent  as  they  are  enjoy 
ed  in  the  other  States,  three  millions  of  dollars  were  paid  from 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF   THE  DAY.  263 

the  common  treasury.  The  post  office  bounty  paid  to  the  seceding 
States  exceeded  seventeen-fold  the  annual  average  amount  of  the 
fishing-bounty  paid  to  the  North.  In  four  years  that  excess  would 
equal  the  sum  total  of  the  amount  paid  since  1792  in  bounties  to 
the  deep-sea  fishery !  This  circumstance  probably  explains  the  fact, 
that  the  pride  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  was  not  alarmed  at 
having  the  mails  still  conveyed  by  the  United  States  three  or  four 
months  after  the  forts  had  been  seized,  the  arsenals  emptied,  and 
the  mints  plundered. 

NAVIGATION    LAWS. 

The  second  of  the  grievances  under  which  the  South  is  laboring, 
and  which,  according  to  Mr.  Stephens,  was  oa  the  occasion  alluded 
to  pleaded  by  the  secretary  of  state  of  the  new  Confederacy  as  a 
ground  for  dissolving  the  Union,  is  the  navigation  laws,  which  give 
to  American  vessels  the  exclusive  enjoyment  of  our  own  coasting 
trade.  This  also  is  a  policy  coeval  with  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  and  universally  adopted  by  maritime  powers,  though 
relaxed  by  England  within  the  last  few  years.  Like  the  fishing- 
bounty,  it  is  a  policy  adopted  for  the  purpose  of  fostering  the 
commercial,  and  with  that  the  naval  marine  of  the  United  States. 
All  administrations,  of  all  parties,  have  favored  it ;  under  its  influ 
ence  our  commercial  tonnage  has  grown  up  to  be  second  to  no 
other  in  the  world,  and  our  navy  has  proved  itself  adequate  to  all 
the  exigencies  of  peace  and  war.  And  are  these  no  objects  in  a 
national  point  of  view  ?  Are  the  seceding  statesmen  really  insensi 
ble  to  interests  of  such  paramount  national  importance?  Can 
they,  for  the  sake  of  an  imaginary  infinitesimal  reduction  of  coast 
wise  freights,  be  willing  to  run  even  the  risk  of  impairing  our 
naval  prosperity?  Are  they  insensible  to  the  fact  that  nothing  but 
the  growth  of  the  American  commercial  marine  protects  the  en 
tire  freighting  interest  of  the  country,  in  which  the  South  is  more 
deeply  interested  than  the  North,  from  European  monopoly? 
The  South  did  not  always  take  so  narrow  a  view  of  the  subject. 
When  the  Constitution  was  framed,  and  the  American  merchant 
marine  was  inconsiderable,  the  discrimination  in  favor  of  United 
States  vessels,  which  then  extended  to  the  foreign  trade,  was  an 
object  of  some  apprehension  on  the  part  of  the  planting  States. 
But  there  were  statesmen  in  the  South  at  that  day  who  did  not 
regard  the  shipping  interest  as  a  local  concern.  "  So  far,"  said 
Mr.  Edward  Eutledge,  in  the  South  Carolina  Convention  of  1788, 


264  TIIE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

"from  not  preferring  the  Northern  States  by  a  navigation  act,  it 
would  be  politic  to  increase  their  strength  by  every  means  in  our 
power,  for  we  had  no  other  resource  in  our  day  of  danger  than  in 
the  naval  force  of  our  Northern  friends,  nor  could  we  ever  expect 
to  become  a  great  nation  till  we  were  powerful  on  the  waters."* 
But  "powerful  on  the  waters"  the  South  can  never  be.  She  has 
live-oak,  naval  stores,  and  gallant  officers  ;  but  her  climate  and  its 
diseases,  the  bars  at  the  mouth  of  nearly  all  her  harbors,  the 
Teredo,  the  want  of  a  merchant  marine  and  of  fisheries,  and  the 
character  of  her  laboring  population,  will  forever  prevent  her 
becoming  a  great  naval  power.  Without  the  protection  of  the 
navy  of  the  United  States,  of  which  the  strength  centers  at  the 
North,  she  would  hold  the  ingress  and  egress  of  every  port  on  her 
coast  at  the  mercy,  I  will  not  say  of  the  great  maritime  states  of 
Europe,  but  of  Holland  and  Denmark,  and  Austria  and  Spain — of 
any  second  or  third  rate  power  which  can  keep  a  few  steam  frig 
ates  at  sea. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  there  is  a  sad  congruity 
between  the  conduct  of  our  seceding  fellow-citizens  and  the 
motives  which  they  assign  for  it.  They  attempt  a  suicidal  separa 
tion  of  themselves  from  a  great  naval  power,  of  which  they  are 
now  an  integral  part,  and  they  put  forward,  as  the  reason  for  this 
self-destructive  course,  the  legislative  measures  which  have  con 
tributed  to  the  growth  of  the  navy.  A  judicious  policy,  designed 
to  promote  that  end,  has  built  up  the  commercial  and  military 
marine  of  the  Union  to  its  present  commanding  stature  and  power; 
the  South,  though  unable  to  contribute  anything  to  its  prosperity 
but  the  service  of  her  naval  officers,  enjoys  her  full  share  of  the 
honor  which  it  reflects  on  the  country,  and  the  protection  which 
it  extends  to  our  flag,  our  coasts,  and  our  commerce ;  but  under 
the  influence  of  a  narrow-minded  sectional  jealousy,  she  is  willing 
to  abdicate  the  noble  position  which  she  now  fills  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth  ;  to  depend  for  her  very  existence  on  the 
exigencies  of  the  cotton  market,  to  live  upon  the  tolerance  of  the 
navies  of  Europe;  and  she  assigns  as  leading  causes  for  this  amaz 
ing  fatuity,  that  the  Northern  fisheries  have  been  encouraged  by  a 
trifling  bounty,  and  that  the  Northern  commercial  marine  has  the 
monopoly  of  the  coast-wise  trade.  And  the  politicians,  who,  for 
reasons  like  these,  almost  too  frivolous  to  merit  the  time  we  have 

*  Elliott'*  Debates,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  299. 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE   DAY  <>65 

devoted  to  their  examination,  are  sapping  a  noble  framework  of 
government,  and  drenching  a  fair  and,  but  for  them,  prosperous 
country  in  blood,  appeal  to  the  public  opinion  of  mankind  for  the 
justice  of  their  cause  and  the  purity  of  their  motives,  and  lift  their 
eyes  to  Heaven  for  a  blessing  on  their  arms! 

THE    TARIFF. 

But  the  taritf  is,  with  one  exception,  the  alleged  monster  wrong, 
for  which  South  Carolina  in  1832  drove  the  Union  to  the  verge  of 
a  civil  war,  and  which,  next  to  the  slavery  question,  the  South  has 
been  taught  to  regard  as  the  most  grievous  of  the  oppressions 
which  she  suffers  at  the  hands  of  the  North,  and  that  by  which 
she  seeks  to  win  the  sympathy  of  the  manufacturing  states  of 
Europe.  It  was  so  treated  in  the  debate  referred  to.  I  am  cer 
tainly  not  going  so  far  to  abuse  your  patience,  as  to  enter  into  a 
discussion  of  the  constitutionality  or  expediency  of  the  protective 
policy,  on  which  I  am  aware  that  opinions  at  the  North  differ,  nor 
do  I  deem  it  necessary  to  expose  the  utter  fallacy  of  the  stupendous 
paradox,  that  duties,  enhancing  the  price  of  imported  articles,  are 
paid,  not  by  the  consumer  of  the  merchandise  imported,  but  by 
the  producer  of  the  last  article  of  export  given  in  exchange.  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  for  this  maxim  (the  forty-bale  theory,  so 
called),  which  has  grown  into  an  article  of  faith  at  the  South,  not 
the  slightest  authority  ever  has  been,  to  my  knowledge,  adduced 
from  any  political  economist  of  any  school.  Indeed,  it  can  be 
shown  to  be  a  shallow  sophism,  inasmuch  as  the  consumer  must  be, 
directly  or  indirectly,  the  producer  of  the  equivalents  given  in  ex 
change  for  the  articles  he  consumes.  But  without  entering  into 
this  discussion,  I  shall  make  a  few  remarks  to  show  the  great  in 
justice  of  representing  the  protective  system  as  being  in  its  origin 
an  oppression  of  which  the  South  has  to  complain  on  the  part  of 
the  North. 

Every  such  suggestion  is  a  complete  inversion  of  the  truth  of 
history.  Some  attempts  at  manufactures  by  machinery  were  made 
at  the  North  before  the  Revolution,  but  to  an  inconsiderable 
extent.  The  manufacturing  system,  as  a  great  Northern  interest, 
is  the  child  of  the  restrictive  policy  of  1807-12,  and  of  the  war. 
That  policy  was  pursued  against  the  earnest  opposition  of  the 
North,  and  to  the  temporary  prostration  of  their  commerce, 
navigation,  and  fisheries.  Their  capital  was  driven  in  this  way 
into  manufactures,  and  on  the  return  of  peace,  the  foundations  of 


266  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY. 

the  protective  system  were  laid  in  the  square-yard  duty  on  cotton 
fabrics,  in  the  support  of  which  Mr.  Oalhoun,  advised,  that  the 
growth  of  the  manufacture  would  open  a  new  market  for  the 
staple  of  the  South,  took  the  lead.  As  late  as  1821,  the  Legislature 
of  South  Carolina  unanimously  affirmed  the  constitutionality  of 
protective  duties,  though  denying  their  expediency,  and  of  all  the 
the  States  of  the  Union,  Louisiana  has  derived  the  greatest  benefit 
from  this  policy ;  in  fact,  she  owes  the  sugar  culture  to  it,  and  has 
for  that  reason  given  it  her  steady  support.  In  all  the  tariff 
battles  while  I  was  a  member  of  Congress,  few  votes  were  surer 
for  the  policy  than  that  of  Louisiana.  If  the  duty  on  an  article 
imported  is  considered  as  added  to  its  price  in  our  market 
(which,  however,  is  far  from  being  invariably  the  case),  the  sugar 
duty  of  late  has  amounted  to  a  tax  of  five  millions  of  dollars 
annually  paid  by  the  consumer,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Louisiana 
planter. 

As  to  its  being  an  unconstitutional  policy,  it  is  perfectly  well 
known  that  the  protection  of  manufactures  was  a  leading  and 
avowed  object  for  the  formation  of  the  Constitution.  The  second 
law  passed  by  Congress,  after  its  formation,  was  a  revenue  law. 
Its  preamble  is  as  follows:  "Whereas,  it  is  necessary  for  the  sup 
port  of  Government,  for  the  discharge  of  the  debts  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  encouragement  and  protection  of  manufactures, 
that  duties  be  laid  on  goods,  wares,  and  merchandise  imported." 
That  act  was  reported  to  the  Ilou^e  of  Eepresentatives  by  Mr. 
Madison,  who  is  entitled  as  much  as  any  one  to  be  called  the 
Father  of  the  Constitution.  While  it  was  pending  before  the 
House,  and  in  the  first  week  of  the  first  session  of  the  first  Con 
gress,  two  memorials  were  presented  praying  for  protective  duties ; 
and  it  is  a  matter  of  some  curiosity  to  inquire,  from  what  part  of 
the  country  this  first  call  came  for  that  policy,  now  put  forward 
as  one  of  the  acts  of  Northern  oppression,  which  justify  the  South 
in  flying  to  arms.  The  first  of  these  petitions  was  from  Baltimore. 
It  implored  the  new  Government  to  lay  a  protecting  duty  on  all 
articles  imported  from  abroad  which  can  be  .manufactured  at  home ; 
the  second  was  from  the  shipwrights,  not  of  New  York,  not  of 
Boston,  not  of  Portland,  but  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  pray 
ing  for  "  such  a  general  regulation  of  trade  and  the  establishment  of 
such  A  NAVIGATION  ACT  as  will  relieve  the  particular  distresses  of 
the  petitioners,  in  common  with  those  of  their  fellow  shipwrights 
throughout  the  Union ;"  and  if  South  Carolina  had  always  been 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE  DAY.  267 

willing  to  make  common  cause  with  their  fellow-citizens  through 
out  the  Union,  it  would  not  now  be  rent  by  civil  war. 

THE    COTTON    CULTURE    INTRODUCED    UNDER   PROTECTION. 

But  the  history  of  the  great  Southern  staple  is  most  curious  and 
instructive.  His  Majesty,  ''King  Cotton,"  on  his  throne,  does  not 
seem  to  be  aware  of  the  influences  which  surrounded  his  cradle. 
The  culture  of  cotton,  on  any  considerable  scale,  is  well  known  to 
be  of  recent  date  in  America.  The  household  manufacture  of  cot 
ton  was  coeval  with  the  settlement  of  the  country.  A  century 
before  the  piano-forte  or  the  harp  was  seen  on  this  continent,  the 
music  of  the  spinning-wheel  was  heard  at  every  fireside  in  town 
and  country.  The  raw  materials  were  wool,  flax,  and  cotton,  the 
last  imported  from  the  West  Indies.  The  colonial  system  of  Great 
Britain,  before  the  Revolution,  forbade  the  establishment  of  any 
other  than  household  manufactures.  Soon  after  the  Revolution, 
cotton-mills  were  erected  in  Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts,  and 
the  infant  manufacture  was  encouraged  by  State  duties  on  the  im 
ported  fabric.  The  raw  material  was  still  derived  exclusively  from 
the  "West  Indies.  Its  culture  in  this  country  was  so  extremely 
limited  and  so  little  known,  that  a  small  parcel  sent  from  the 
United  States  to  Liverpool,  in  1784,  was  seized  at  the  custom 
house  there,  as  an  illicit  importation  of  British  colonial  produce. 
Even  as  late  as  1794.  and  by  persons  so  intelligent  as  the  negoti 
ators  of  Jay's  treaty,  it  was  not  known  that  cotton  was  an  article 
of  growth  and  export  from  the  United  States.  In  the  twelfth 
article  of  that  treaty,  as  laid  before  the  Senate,  cotton  was  included 
with  molasses,  sugar,  coffee,  and  cocoa,  as  articles  which  American 
vessels  should  not  be  permitted  to  carry  from  the  Islands  or  from 
the  United  States  to  any  foreign  country. 

In  the  revenue  law  of  1789,  as  it  passed  through  the  House  of 
Representatives,  cotton,  with  other  raw  materials,  was  placed  on 
the  free  list.  When  the  bill  reached  the  Senate,  a  duty  of  three 
cents  per  pound  was  laid  upon  cotton,  not  to  encourage,  not  to 
protect,  but  to  create  the  domestic  culture.  On  the  discussion  of 
this  amendment  in  the  House,  a  member  from  South  Carolina  de 
clared  that  "cotton  was  in  contemplation"  in  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia,  "  and  if  good  seed  could  le  procured,  he  hoped  it  might 
succeed."  On  this  hope  the  amendment  of  the  Senate  was  con 
curred  in,  and  the  duty  of  three  cents  per  pound  was  laid  on  cot 
ton.  In  1791,  Hamilton,  in  his  report  on  manufactures,  recoin- 


268  TnE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

mended  the  repeal  of  this  duty,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  "  a  very 
serious  impediment  to  the  manufacture  of  cotton  ;"  hut  his  recom 
mendation  was  disregarded. 

Thus  in  the  infancy  of  the  cotton  manufactures  of  the  North,  at 
the  moment  when  they  were  deprived  of  the  protection  extended 
to  them  before  the  Constitution  by  State  laws,  and  while  they 
were  struggling  against  English  competition  under  the  rapidly  im 
proving  machinery  of  Arkwright,  which  it  was  highly  penal  to 
export  to  foreign  countries,  a  heavy  burden  was  laid  upon  them  by 
this  protecting  duty,  to  enable  the  planters  of  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  to  explore  the  tropics  for  a  variety  of  cotton-seed  adapted 
to  their  climate.  For  seven  years,  at  least,  and  probably  more, 
this  duty  was  in  every  sense  of  the  word  a  protecting  duty.  There 
was  not  a  pound  of  cotton  spun — no,  not  for  candle-wicks  to  light 
the  humble  industry  of  the  cottages  of  the  North — which  did  not 
pay  this  tribute  to  the  Southern  planter.  The  growth  of  the  native 
article,  as  we  have  seen,  had  riot  in  1794  reached  a  point  to  be 
known  to  Chief-Justice  Jay  as  one  of  actual  or  probable  export. 
As  late  as  1796,  the  manufacturers  of  Brandywine,  in  Delaware, 
petitioned  Congress  for  the  repeal  of  this  duty  on  imported  cotton, 
and  the  petition  was  rejected  on  the  report  of  a  committee,  con 
sisting  of  a  majority  from  the  Southern  States,  on  the  ground,  that 
"to  repeal  the  duty  on  raw  cotton  imported  would  be  to  damp  the 
growth  of  cotton  in  our  own  country."  Radicle  and  plumule, 
root  and  stalk,  blossom  and  boll,  the  culture  of  the  cotton-plant 
in  the  United  States  was,  in  its  infancy,  the  foster-child  of  the  pro- 
\  ,tective  system. 

When,  therefore,  the  pedigree  of  King  Cotton  is  traced,  he  is 
found  to  be  the  lineal  child  of  the  Tariff;  called  into  being  by  a 
specific  duty  ;  reared  by  a  tax  laid  upon  the  manufacturing  in 
dustry  of  the  North,  to  create  the  culture  of  the  raw  material  in 
the  South.  The  Northern  manufactures  of  America  were  slightly 
protected  in  1789  because  they  were  too  feeble  to  stand  alone. 
Reared  into  magnitude  under  the  restrictive  system  and  the  war 
of  1812,  they  were  upheld  in  1816  because  they  were  too  import 
ant  to  be  sacrificed,  and  because  the  great  staple  of  the  South  had 
a  joint  interest  in  their  prosperity.  King  Cotton  alone,  not  in  his 
manhood,  not  in  his  adolescence,  not  in  his  infancy,  but  in  his  very 
embryo  state,  was  pensioned  upon  the  Treasury  before  the  seed 
from  which  he  sprang  was  cast  "in  the  lowest  parts  of  the  earth." 
In  the  book  of  the  Tariff  u  his  members  were  written,  which 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY.  269 

in  continuance  were  fashioned  when  as  vet  there  were  none  of 
them.11 

But  it  was  not  enough  to  create  the  culture  of  cotton  at  the 
South,  by  taxing  the  manufactures  of  the  North  with  a  duty  on 
the  raw  material ;  the  extension  of  that  culture  and  the  prosperity 
which  it  has  conferred  upon  the  South  are  due  to  the  mechanical 
genius  of  the  Xorth.  What  says  Mr.  Justice  Johnson,  of  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  the  United  States,  and  a  citizen  of  South  Carolina? 
"  With  regard  to  the  utility  of  this  discovery'1  (the  cotton-gin  of 
Whitney),  "the  court  would  deem  it  a  waste  of  time  to  dwell  long 
upon  this  topic.  Is  there  a  man  who  hears  us  that  has  not  expe 
rienced  its  utility  ?  The  whole  interior  of  the  Southern  States  was 
languishing  and  its  inhabitants  emigrating  for  want  of  some  object 
to  engage  their  attention  and  employ  their  industry,  when  the  in 
vention  of  this  machine  at  once  opened  views  to  them  which  set 
the  whole  country  in  active  motion.  From  childhood  to  age  it 
has  presented  us  a  lucrative  employment.  Individuals  who  were 
depressed  in  poverty  and  sunk  in  idleness  have  suddenly  risen  to 
wealth  and  respectability.  Our  debts  have  been  paid  off,  our  cap 
itals  increased,  and  our  lands  trebled  in  value.  We  can  not 
express  the  weight  of  obligation  which  the  country  owes  to  this 
invention  ;  the  extent  of  it  can  not  now  be  seen."  Yes,  and  when 
happier  days  shall  return,  and  the  South,  awakening  from  her  sui 
cidal  delusion,  shall  remember  who  it  was  that  sowed  her  sunny 
fields  with  the  seeds  of  those  golden  crops  with  which  she  thinks 
to  rule  the  world,  she  will  cast  a  vail  of  oblivion  over  the  memory 
of  the  ambitious  men  who  have  goaded  her  to  her  present  mad 
ness,  and  will  rear  a  monument  of  her  gratitude,  in  the  beautiful 
City  of  Elms,  over  the  ashes  of  her  greatest  benefactor — ELI 
WHITNEY. 

INTERFERENCE    WITH    SLAVERY    THE    GREAT    ALLEGED    GRIEVANCE. 

But  the  great  complaint  of  the  South,  and  that  which  is  ad 
mitted  to  be  the  immediate  occasion  of  the  present  revolt,  is  the 
alleged  interference  of  the  Xorth  in  the  Southern  institution  of 
slavery;  a  subject  on  which  the  sensibilities  of  the  two  sections 
have  been  so  deeply  and  fearfully  stirred,  that  it  is  nearly  impos 
sible  to  speak  words  of  impartial  truth.  As  I  have  already  stated, 
the  declaration  by  South  Carolina  of  the  causes  which  prompted 
her  to  secede  from  the  Union,  alleged  no  other  reason  for  this 
movement  than  the  enactment  of  laws  to  obstruct  the  surrender 


270  THE   QUESTIONS   OF   THE  DAY. 

of  fugitive  slaves.  The  declaration  does  not  state  that  South 
Carolina  ever  lost  a  slave  by  the  operation  of  these  laws,  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  a  dozen  from  all  the  States  have  been  lost  from 
this  cause.  A  gross  error  on  this  subject  pervades  the  popular 
mind  at  the  South.  Some  hundreds  of  slaves,  in  the  aggregate, 
escape  annually  ;  some  to  the  recesses  of  the  Dismal  Swamp ;  some 
to  the  Everglades  of  Florida ;  some  to  the  trackless  mountain 
region  which  traverses  the  South ;  some  to  the  Mexican  States 
and  the  Indian  tribes ;  some  across  the  free  States  to  Canada. 
The  popular  feeling  of  the  South  ascribes  the  entire  loss  to  the 
laws  of  the  free  States ;  while  it  is  doubtful  whether  these  laws 
cause  any  portion  of  it.  The  public  sentiment  of  the  North  is  not 
such,  of  course,  as  to  dispose  the  community  to  obstruct  the  escape 
or  aid  in  the  surrender  of  slaves.  Neither  is  it  at  the  South.  No 
one,  I  am  told,  at  the  South,  not  called  upon  by  official  duty,  joins 
in  the  hue  and  cry  after  a  fugitive ;  and  whenever  he  escapes  from 
any  State  south  of  the  border  tier,  it  is  evident  that  his  flight  must 
have  been  aided  in  a  community  of  slaveholders.  If  the  North 
Carolina  fugitive  escapes  through  Virginia,  or  the  Tennessee  fugi 
tive  escapes  through  Kentucky,  why  are  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio 
alone  blamed?  On  this  whole  subject  the  grossest  injustice  is 
done  to  the  North.  She  is  expected  to  be  more  tolerant  of  slavery 
than  the  South  herself;  for  while  the  South  demands  of  the  North 
entire  acquiescence  in  the  extremes!  doctrines  of  slave  property,  it 
is  a  well-known  fact,  and  as  such  alluded  to  by  Mr.  Clay,  in  his 
speech  on  the  compromises  of  1850,  that  any  man  who  habitually 
traffics  in  this  property  is  held  in  the  same  infamy  at  Richmond 
and  New  Orleans  that  he  would  be  at  Philadelphia  or  Cincinnati.* 
While  South  Carolina,  assigning  the  cause  of  secession,  confines 
herself  to  the  State  laws  for  obstructing  the  surrender  of  fugitives, 
in  other  quarters,  by  the  press,  in  the  manifestoes  and  debates  on 
the  subject  of  secession,  and  in  the  official  papers  of  the  new  Con 
federacy,  the  general  conduct  of  the  North,  with  respect  to  slavery, 
is  put  forward  as  the  justifying,  nay,  the  compelling  cause  of  the 
revolution.  This  subject,  still  more  than  that  of  the  tariff,  is  too 
trite  for  discussion,  with  the  hope  of  saying  anything  new  on  the 
general  question.  I  will  but  submit  a  few  considerations  to  show 
the  great  injustice  which  is  done  to  the  North,  by  representing  her 
as  the  aggressor  in  this  sectional  warfare. 

*  See  Appendix  C 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY  271 

The  Southern  theory  assumes  that,  at  the  time  of  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  the  same  antagonism  prevailed  as  now  between 
the  North  and  South  on  the  general  subject  of  slavery  ;  that 
although  it  existed  to  some  extent  in  all  the  States  but  one  of  the 
Union,  it  was  a  feeble  and  declining  interest  at  the  North,  and 
mainly  seated  at  the  South ;  that  the  soil  and  climate  of  the  North 
were  soon  found  to  be  unpropitious  to  slave  labor,  while  the  reverse 
was  the  case  at  the  South  ;  that  the  Northern  States,  in  consequence, 
having  from  interested  motives  abolished  slavery,  sold  their  slaves 
to  the  South,  and  that  then,  although  the  existence  of  slavery  was 
recognized  and  its  protection  guaranteed  by  the  Constitution,  as 
soon  as  the  Northern  States  had  acquired  a  controlling  voice  in 
Congress,  a  persistent  and  organized  system  of  hostile  measures, 
against  the  rights  of  the  owners  of  slaves  in  the  Southern  States, 
was  inaugurated  and  gradually  extended,  in  violation  of  the  com 
promises  of  the  Constitution,  as  well  as  of  the  honor  and  good  faith 
tacitly  pledged  to  the  South,  by  the  manner  in  which  the  North 
disposed  of  her  slaves. 

Such,  in  substance,  is  the  statement  of  Mr.  Davis  in  his  late 
message,  and  he  then  proceeds,  seemingly  as  if  rehearsing  the  acts 
of  this  Northern  majority  in  Congress,  to  refer  to  the  anti-slavery 
measures  of  the  State  legislatures,  to  the  resolutions  qf  abolition 
societies,  to  the  passionate  appeals  of  the  party  press,  and  to  the 
acts  of  lawless  individuals,  during  the  progress  of  this  unhappy 
agitation. 

THE    SOUTH   FORMERLY    OPPOSED    TO    SLAVERY. 

Now,  this  entire  view  of  the  subject,  with  whatever  boldness  it 
is  affirmed  and  with  whatever  persistency  it  is  repeated,  is  destitute 
of  foundation.  It  is  demonstrably  at  war  with  the  truth  of  history, 
and  is  contradicted  by  facts  known  to  those  now  on  the  stage  or 
which  are  matters  of  recent  record.  At  the  time  of  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  and  long  afterward,  there  was,  generally^ 
speaking,  no  sectional  difference  of  opinion  between  North  and 
South  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  It  was  in  both  parts  of  the 
country  regarded,  in  the  established  formula  of  the  day,  as  ua 
social,  political,  and  moral  evil."  The  general  feeling  in  favor  of 
universal  liberty  and  the  rights  of  man,  wrought  into  fervor  in  the 
progress  of  the  Revolution,  naturally  strengthened  the  auti- slavery 
sentiment  throughout  the  Union.  It  is  the  South  which  has  since 
changed,  not  the  North.  The  theory  of  a  change  in  the  Northern 


272  THE  QUESTIONS  OF   THE   DAY. 

mind,  growing  out  of  a  discovery  made  soon  after  1789,  that  our 
soil  and  climate  were  unpropitious  to  slavery  (as  if  the  soil  and 
climate  then  were  different  from  what  they  had  always  been),  and 
a  consequent  sale  to  the  South  of  the  slaves  of  the  North,  is  purely 
mythical ;  as  groundless  in  fact  as  it  is  absurd  in  statement.  I 
have  often  asked  for  the  evidence  of  this  last  allegation,  and  I  have 
never  found  an  individual  who  attempted  even  to  prove  it.  But 
however  this  may  be,  the  South  at  that  time  regarded  slavery  as  an 
evil,  though  a  necessary  one,  and  habitually  spoke  of  it  in  that 
light.  Its  continued  existence  was  supposed  to  depend  on  keeping 
up  the  African  slave-trade ;  and  South  as  well  as  North,  Virginia 
as  well  as  Massachusetts,  passed  laws  to  prohibit  that  traffic ;  they 
were,  however,  before  the  Revolution,  vetoed  by  the  Royal  gov 
ernors.  One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  Continental  Congress,  unan 
imously  subscribed  by  its  members,  was  an  agreement  neither  to 
import  nor  purchase  any  slave  imported  after  the  first  of  December, 
1774.  In  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  as  originally  drafted 
by  Mr.  Jefferson,  both  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  were  denounced 
in  the  most  uncompromising  language.  In  1777  the  traffic  was 
forbidden  in  Virginia  by  State  law,  no  longer  subject  to  the  veto 
of  Royal  governors.  In  1784  an  ordinance  was  reported  by  Mr. 
Jefferson  to  the  old  Congress,  providing  that  after  1800  there 
should  be  no  slavery  in  any  Territory,  ceded  or  to  be  ceded  to  the 
United  States.  The  ordinance  failed  at  that  time  to  be  enacted, 
but  the  same  prohibition  formed  a  part  by  general  consent  of  the 
ordinance  of  1787  for  the  organization  of  the  Northwestern 
Territory.  In  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia,"  published  in  that  year, 
Mr.  Jefferson  depicted  the  evils  of  slavery  in  terms  of  fearful 
import.  In  the  same  year  the  Constitution  was  framed.  It  recog 
nized  the  existence  of  slavery,  but  the  word  was  carefully  excluded 
from  the  instrument,  and  Congress  was  authorized  to  abolish  the 
traffic  in  twenty  years.  In  1796  Judge  St.  George  Tucker,  law 
professor  in  William  and  Mary  College  in  Virginia,  published  a 
treatise,  entitled,  "A  Dissertation  on  Slavery,  with  a  Proposal  for 
the  Gradual  Abolition  of  it,  dedicated  to  the  General  Assembly  of 
Virginia."  In  the  preface  to  the  Essay  he  speaks  of  the  "  abolition 
of  slavery  in  this  State  as  an  object  of  the  first  importance,  not 
only  to  our  moral  character  and  domestic  peace,  but  even  to  our 
political  salvation.'1  In  1797  Mr.  Pinckney,  in  the  Legislature  of 
Maryland,  maintained  that,  ''by  the  eternal  principles  of  justice, 
no  man  in  the  State  has  the  right  to  hold  his  slave  a  single  hour." 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY.  273 

In  1803  Mr.  John  Randolph,  from  a  committee  on  the  subject, 
reported  that  the  prohibition  of  slavery,  by  the  ordinance  of  1787, 
was  a  measure  wisely  calculated  to  promote  the  happiness  and 
prosperity  of  the  Northwestern  States,  and  to  give  strength  and 
security  to  that  extensive  frontier."  Under  Mr.  Jefferson,  the  im 
portation  of  slaves  into  the  Territories  of  Mississippi  and  Louisiana 
was  prohibited  in  advance  of  the  time  limited  by  the  Constitution, 
for  the  interdiction  of  the  slave-trade.  When  the  Missouri  restric 
tion  was  enacted,  all  the  members  of  Mr.  Monroe's  cabinet — Mr. 
Crawford,  of  Georgia,  Mr.  Calhonn,  of  South  Carolina,  and  Mr.  "Wirt, 
of  Virginia— concurred  with  Mr.  Monroe  in  affirming  its  constitu 
tionality.  In  1832,  after  the  Southampton  massacre,  the  evils  of 
slavery  were  exposed  in  the  Legislature  of  Virginia,  and  the  expe 
diency  of  its  gradual  abolition  maintained,  in  terms  as  decided  as 
were  ever  employed  by  the  most  uncompromising  agitator.  A  bill 
for  that  object  was  introduced  into  the  Assembly  by  the  grandson 
of  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  warmly  supported  by  distinguished  politicians 
now  on  the  stage.  ISTay,  we  have  the  recent  admission  of  the 
Vice-President  of  the  seceding  confederacy,  that  what  he  calls 
"the  errors  of  the  past  generation,"  meaning  the  anti- slavery  sen 
timents  entertained  by  Southern  statesmen,  ''still  clung  to  many  as 
late  as  twenty  years  ago." 

To  this  hasty  review  of  Southern  opinions  and  measures,  showing 
their  accordance  till  a  late  date  with  Northern  sentiment  on  the 
subject  of  slavery,  I  might  add  the  testimony  of  Washington,  of 
Patrick  Henry,  of  George  Mason,  of  Wythe,  of  Pendleton,  of  Mar 
shall,  of  Lo \vndes,  of  Poinsett,  of  Clay,  and  of  nearly  every  first- 
class  name  in  the  Southern  States.  Nay,  as  late  as  1849,  and  after 
the  Union  had  been  shaken  by  the  agitations  incident  to  the 
acquisition  of  Mexican  Territory,  the  Convention  of  California, 
although  nearly  one  half  of  its  members  were  from  the  slaveholding 
States,  unanimously  adopted  a  constitution  by  which  slavery  was 
prohibited  in  that  State.  In  fact,  it  is  now  triumphantly  pro 
claimed  by  the  chiefs  of  the  revolt,  that  the  ideas  prevailing  on 
this  subject  when  the  Constitution  was  adopted,  are  fundamentally 
wronc;;  that  the  ne\v  government  of  the  Confederate  States  u  re.<ts 
upon  exactly  the  opposite  ideas ;  that  its  foundations  are  laid,  and 
its  corner-stone  reposes  upon  the  great  truth,  that  the  negro  is  not 
equal  to  the  white  man,  that  slavery— subordination  to  the  superior 
race— is  his  natural  and  normal  condition.  This,  our  new  govern 
ment,  is  the  first  in  the  history  of  the  world  based  upon  this  phys- 


<£*j.\  THK  QUESTIONS  OF   THK    DAY. 

ionl,  philosophical,  and  moral  truth."  So  little  foundation  is  there 
for  the  st.'itement,  that  the  North,  from  the  first,  has  heen  engaged 
ill  «  struggle  with  the  South  on  the  suhjeet  of  slavery,  or  lias 
departed  in  any  decree  from  the  spirit  with  which  the  Union  \v;is 
entered  into  hy  both  parties.  The  faot  is  precisely  the  reverse. 

NO    ANTI  Sl.AVKKY    MKASUUKH    KNACTKI)    11Y    CONGRESS. 

Mr.  I>avis,  in  his  message  to  the  Confederate  States,  goes  over  a 
long  list  of  measures,  which  he  declares  to  have  heen  inaugurated 
and  gradually  extended  as  soon  as  the  Northern  States  had  reached 
a  sutiic&Hit  numher  to  give  their  representatives  a  controlling  A'oiee 
in  Congress.  But  of  all  these  measures  not  one  is  a  matter  of  Con 
gressional  legislation,  nor  has  Congress,  with  this  alleged  control 
ling  voice  on  the  part  of  the  North,  ever  either  passed  a  law  hostile 
to  the  interests  of  the  South  on  the  suhjeet  of  slavery,  nor  failed 
to  pass  one  which  the  South  has  claimed  as  belonging  to  her  rights 
or  needed  for  her  safety.  In  truth,  the  North,  meaning  thereby 
the  anti-slavery  North,  never  has  had  the  control  of  both  Houses 
of  Congress,  never  of  the  judiciary,  rarely  of  the  executive,  and 
ftever  exerted  these  to  the  prejudice  of  Southern  rights.  Every 
judicial  or  legislative  issue  on  this  question,  with  the  single  excep 
tion  of  the  final  admission  of  Kansas,  that  has  ever  been  raised 
before  Congress,  has  been  decided  in  favor  of  the  South,  and  yet 
sho  allows  herself  to  allege  lka  persistent  and  organized  svstem  of 
hostile  measures  against  the  rights  of  the  owners  of  slaves"  as  the 
justification  of  her  rebellion. 

The  hostile  measures  alluded  to  are,  as  1  have  said,  none  of 
them  matters  of  Congressional  legislation.  Some  of  them  are 
purely  imaginary  as  to  any  injurious  effect,  others  much  exagge 
rated,  others  unavoidably  incident  to  freedom  of  speech  and  the 
press.  You  are  aware,  my  friends,  that  I  have  always  disapproved 
the  agitation  of  the  subject  of  slavery  for  party  purposes,  or  with 
a  view  to  infringe  upon  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  South. 
Hut  if  the  North  has  given  cause  of  complaint  in  this  respect,  the 
fault  has  been  equally  committed  by  the  South.  The  subject  has 
heen  fully  as  much  abused  there  as  here  for  party  purposes,  and  if 
I  he  North  has  ever  made  it  the  means  of  gaining  a  sectional 
triumph,  she  has  but  clone  what  the  South,  for  the  last  twenty-live 
years,  has  never  missed  an  occasion  of  doing.  With  respect  to 
everything  substantial  in  the  complaints  of  the  South  against  the 
North,  Congress  and  the  States  have  atlorded  or  tendered  all 


THE   QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAT.  275 

reasonable — all  possible — satisfaction.  She  asked  for  a  more 
stringent  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  in  1850,  and  it  was  enacted.  She 
complained  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  although  adopted  in  con 
formity  with  all  the  traditions  of  the  Government,  and  approved 
by  the  most  judicious  Southern  statesmen,  and  after  thirty-four 
years'  acquiescence  on  the  part  of  the  people,  Congress  repealed  it. 
She  wished  for  a  judicial  decision  of  the  territorial  question  in  her 
favor,  and  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  in  contraven 
tion  of  the  whole  current  of  our  legislation,  so  decided  it.  She 
insisted  on  carrying  this  decision  into  effect,  and  three  new  Terri 
tories,  at  the  very  last  session  of  Congress,  were  organized  in  con 
formity  to  it,  as  Utah  and  Xew  Mexico  had  been  before  it  was 
rendered.  She  demanded  a  guaranty  against  amendments  of  the 
Constitution  adverse  to  her  interests,  and  it  was  given  by  the 
requisite  majority  of  the  two  Houses.  She  required  the  repeal  of 
the  State  laws  obstructing  the  surrender  of  fugitive  slaves,  and 
although  she  had  taken  the  extreme  remedy  of  revolt  into  1^-r 
hands,  they  were  repealed  or  modified.  Nothing  satisfied  her, 
because  there  was  an  active  party  in  the  cotton-growing  States  led 
by  ambitions  men  determined  on  disunion,  who  were  resolved  not 
to  be  satisfied,  in  one  instance  alone  the  South  has  suffered  defeat. 
The  North,  for  the  first  time  since  the  foundation  of  the  Govern 
ment,  has  chosen  a  President  by  her  unaided  electoral  vote,  and 
that  is  the  occasion  of  the  present  unnatural  war.  I  can  not 
appropriate  to  myself  any  portion  of  those  cheers,  for,  as  you 
know,  I  did  riot  contribute,  by  rny  vote,  to  that  result;  but  I  did 
enlist  under  the  banner  of  "the  Union,  the  Constitution,  and  the 
Enforcement  of  the  Laws."  Under  that  banner  J  mean  to  stand, 
and  with  it,  if  it  is  struck  down.  I  am  willing  to  fall.  Even  for 
this  result  the  South  has  no  one  to  blame  but  herself.  Her  dis- 
unionists  would  give  their  votes  for  no  candidate  but  the  one 
selected  by  leaders  who  avowed  the  purpo.se  of  effecting  a  revolu 
tion  of  the  cotton  States,  and  who  brought  about  a  schism  in  the 
Democratic  party,  directly  calculated,  probably  designed,  to  produce 
the  event  which  actually  took  pla"e.  with  all  its  dread  consequences. 

J'Jil'I'.KSK.VTATIO.V    OF    THi'.Ki:    FIFTHS    OF    'IIJK    M,AVK.H. 

I  tni-t  1  have  shown  the  flagrant  injustice  of  this  whole 
attempt,  to  fa-tori  upon  the  North  the  charge  of  wielding  the 
powers  of  the  Federal  Government  to  the  prejudice  of  the  South. 
But  there  is  one  great  fact  connected  with  this  subject  seldom 


THE   QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY 

prominently  brought  forward,  which  ought  forever  to  close  the 
lips  of  the  South  in  this  warfare  of  sectional  reproach.  Under  the 
old  confederation,  the  Congress  consisted  of  but  one  House,  and 
each  State,  large  and  small,  had  but  a  single  vote,  and,  conse 
quently,  an  equal  share  in  the  Government,  if  Government  it 
could  be  called,  of  the  Union.  This  manifest  injustice  was  barely 
tolerable  in  a  state  of  war,  when  the  imminence  of  the  public 
danger  tended  to  produce  unanimity  of  feeling  and  action.  AVhen 
the  country  was  relieved  from  the  pressure  of  the  war,  and  discord 
ant  interests  more  and  more  disclosed  themselves,  the  equality  of 
the  States  became  a  positive  element  of  discontent,  and  contrib 
uted  its  full  share  to  the  downfall  of  that  short-lived  and  ill- com 
pacted  frame  of  Government. 

Accordingly,  when  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was 
formed,  the  great  object  and  the  main  difficulty  was  to  reconcile 
the  equality  of  the  States  (which  gave  to  Rhode  Island  and  Dela 
ware  equal  weight  with  Virginia  and  Massachusetts)  with  a  pro 
portionate  representation  of  the  people.  Each  of  these  principles 
was  of  vital  importance ;  the  first  being  demanded  by  the  small 
States,  as  due  to  their  equal  independence,  and  the  last  being  de 
manded  by  the  large  States,  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  the  Constitu 
tion  was  the  work  and  the  Government  of  the  people,  and  in 
conformity  with  the  great  law  in  which  the  Revolution  had  its  ori 
gin,  that  representation  and  taxation  should  go  hand  in  hand. 

The  problem  was  solved,  in  the  Federal  Convention,  by  a  sys 
tem  of  extremely  refined  arrangements,  of  which  the  chief  was 
that  there  should  be  two  Houses  of  Congress,  that  each  State 
should  have  an  equal  representation  in  the  Senate  (voting,  how 
ever,  not  by  States,  but  per  capita),  and  a  number  of  Representa 
tives  in  the  House  in  proportion  to  its  population.  But  here  a 
formidable  difficulty  presented  itself,  growing  out  of  the  anomalous 
character  of  the  population  of  the  slaveholding  States,  consisting, 
as  it  did,  of  a  dominant  and  a  subject  class,  the  latter  excluded  by 
local  law  from  the  enjoyment  of  all  political  rights  and  regarded 
simply  as  property.  In  this  state  of  things,  was  it  just  or  equita 
ble  that  the  slaveholding  States,  in  addition  to  the  number  of 
Representatives  to  which  their  free  population  entitled  them, 
should  have  a  further  share  in  the  Government  of  the  country,  on 
account  of  the  slaves  held  as  property  by  a  small  portion  of  the 
ruling  class?  While  property  of  every  kind  in  the  non-slavehold- 
ing  States  was  unrepresented,  was  it  just  that  this  species  of  prop- 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY.  277 

erty,  forming  a  large  proportion  of  the  entire  property  of  the 
South,  should  be  allowed  to  swell  the  representation  of  the  slave- 
holding  States? 

This  serious  difficulty  was  finally  disposed  of  in  a  manner  mutu 
ally  satisfactory,  hy  providing  that  representatives  and  direct 
taxes  should  be  apportioned  among  the  States  on  the  same  basis  of 
population,  ascertained  by  adding  to  the  whole  number  of  free 
persons  three  fifths  of  the  slaves.  It  was  expected  at  this  time 
that  the  Federal  treasury  would  be  mainly  supplied  by  direct  tax 
ation.  While,  therefore,  the  rule  adopted  gave  to  the  South  a 
number  of  Representatives  out  of  proportion  to  the  number  of  her 
citizens,  she  would  be  restrained  from  exercising  this  power  to  the 
prejudice  of  the  North,  by  the  fact  that  any  increase  of  the  public 
burdens  would  fall  in  the  same  increased  proportion  on  herself. 
For  the  additional  weight  which  the  South  gained  in  the  Presiden 
tial  election  by  this  adjustment,  the  North  received  no  com 
pensation. 

But  now  mark  the  practical  operation  of  the  compromise. 
Direct  taxation,  instead  of  being  the  chief  resource  of  the  treasury, 
has  been  resorted  to  but  four  times  since  the  foundation  of  the 
Government,  and  then  for  small  amounts;  in  1798,  two  millions 
of  dollars;  in  1813,  three  millions;  in  1815,  six  millions;  in  1815, 
three  millions  again ;  in  all  fourteen  millions,  the  sum  total  raised 
by  direct  taxation  in  seventy-two  years,  less  than  an  average  of 
two  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  AY  hat  number  of  Repre 
sentatives,  beyond  the  proportion  of  their  free  population,  the 
South  has  elected  in  former  Congresses,  I  have  not  computed. 
In  the  last  Congress  she  was  represented  by  twenty  members  in 
behalf  of  her  slaves,  being  nearly  one  eleventh  part  of  the  entire 
House.  As  the  increasing  ratio  of  the  two  classes  of  population 
has  not  greatly  varied,  it  is  probable  that  the  South,  in  virtue  of 
her  slaves,  has  always  enjoyed  about  the  same  proportionate 
representation  in  the  House,  in  excess  of  that  accruing  from  her 
free  population.  As  it  has  rarely  happened  in  our  political  divi 
sions  that  important  measures  have  been  carried  by  large  major 
ities,  this  excess  has  been  quite  sufficient  to  assure  the  South  a 
majority  on  all  sectional  questions.  It  enabled  her  to  elect  her 
candidate  for  the  Presidency  in  1800,  and  thus  effect  the  great 
political  revolution  of  that  year,  and  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  account 
for  that  approach  to  a  monopoly  of  the  Government  which  she  has 
ever  enjoyed. 


278  THE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

Now,  though  the  consideration  for  which  the  North  agreed  to 
this  arrangement  may  be  said  to  have  wholly  failed,  it  has  never 
theless  been  quietly  acquiesced  in.  I  do  not  mean  that  in  times  of 
high  party  excitement  it  has  never  been  alluded  to  as  a  hardship. 
The  Hartford  Convention  spoke  of  it  as  a  grievance  which  ought 
to  be  remedied ;  but  even  since  our  political  controversies  have 
turned  almost  wholly  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  I  am  not  aware 
that  this  entire  failure  of  the  equivalent,  for  which  the  North  gave 
up  to  the  South  what  has  secured  to  her,  in  fact,  the  almost  ex 
clusive  control  of  the  Government  of  the  country,  has  been  a 
frequent  or  a  prominent  subject  of  complaint. 

So  much  for  the  pursuit  by  the  North  of  measures  hostile  to  the 
interests  of  the  South ;  so  much  for  the  grievances  urged  by  the 
South  as  her  justification  for  bringing  upon  the  country  the  crimes 
and  sufferings  of  civil  war,  and  aiming  at  the  prostration  of  a  gov 
ernment  admitted  by  herself  to  be  the  most  perfect  the  world  has 
seen,  and  under  which  all  her  own  interests  have  been  eminently 
protected  and  favored ;  for  to  complete  the  demonstration  of  the 
unreasonableness  of  her  complaints,  it  is  necessary  only  to  add, 
that,  by  the  admission  of  her  leading  public  men,  there  never  was 
a  time  when  her  "  peculiar  institution"  was  so  stable  and  prosper 
ous  as  at  the  present  moment.* 

WHY    SHOULD    WE   NOT   RECOGNIZE    THE    SECEDING    STATES  ? 

And  now  let  us  rise  from  these  disregarded  appeals  to  the  truth 
of  history  and  the  wretched  subtilties  of  the  secession  school  of 
argument,  and  contemplate  the  great  issue  before  us  in  its  solemn 
practical  reality.  "  Why  should  we  not,"  it  is  asked,  "  admit  the 
claims  of  the  seceding  States,  acknowledge  their  independence,  and 
put  an  end  at  once  to  the  war?"  "Why  should  we  not?"  I 
answer  the  question  by  asking  another,  "  Why  should  we  ?" 
What  have  we  to  gain,  what  to  hope,  from  the  pursuit  of  that 
course?  Peace?  But  we  were  at  peace  before.  Why  are  we  not 
at  peace  now  ?  The  North  has  not  waged  the  war ;  it  has  been 
forced  upon  us  i$  self-defense;  and  if,  while  they  had  the  Consti 
tution  and  the  laws,  the  Executive,  Congress,  and  the  courts,  all 
controlled  by  themselves,  the  South,  dissatisfied  with  legal  protec 
tions  and  constitutional  remedies,  has  grasped  the  sword,  can  North 
and  South  hope  to  live  in  peace  when  the  bonds  of  union  are 

*  See  Appendix  D. 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY.  279 

broken,  and  amicable  means  of  adjustment  are  repudiated  ? 
Peace  is  the  very  last  thing  which  secession,  if  recognized,  will 
give  us;  it  will  give  us  nothing  but  a  hollow  truce — time  to  pre 
pare  the  means  of  new  outrages.  It  is  in  its  very  nature  a  per 
petual  cause  of  hostility  ;  an  eternal,  never-canceled  letter  of 
marque  and  reprisal,  an  everlasting  proclamation  of  border-war. 
How  can  peace  exist  when  all  the  causes  of  dissension  shall  be 
indefinitely  multiplied;  when  unequal  revenue  laws  shall  Lave  led 
to  a  gigantic  system  of  smuggling;  when  a  general  stampede  of 
slavery  shall  take  place  along  the  border,  with  no  thought  of 
rendition,  and  all  the  thousand  causes  of  mutual  irritation  shall  be 
called  into  action,  on  a  frontier  of  1,500  miles,  not  marked  by 
natural  boundaries,  and  not  subject  to  a  common  jurisdiction  or  a 
mediating  power  ?  We  did  believe  in  peace  ;  fondly,  credulously 
believed,  that,  cemented  by  the  mild  umpirage  of  the  Federal 
Union,  it  might  dwell  forever  beneath  the  folds  of  the  star- 
spangled  banner  and  the  sacred  shield  of  a  common  nationality. 
That  was  the  great  arcanum  of  policy;  that  was  the  State  mystery 
into  which  men  and  angels  desired  to  look ;  hidden  from  ages,  but 
revealed  to  us : 

"  "Which  kings  and  prophets  waited  for, 
And  sought,  but  iiever  found," 

a  family  of  States  independent  of  each  other  for  local  concerns, 
united  under  one  government  for  the  management  of  common 
interests  and  the  prevention  of  internal  feuds.  There  was  no  limit 
to  the  possible  extension  of  such  a  system.  It  had  already  com 
prehended  half  of  North  America,  and  it  might, -in" life"  course  of 
time,  have  folded  the  continent  in  its  peaceful,  beneficent  embrace. 
We  fondly  dreamed  that,  in  the  lapse  of  ages,  it  would  have  been 
extended  till  half  the  Western;  hemisphere  had  realized  the  vision 
of  universal,  perpetual  peace..  From  that  dream  we  have  been 
rudely  startled  by  the  array  of  ten  thousand  armed  men  in 
Charleston  Harbor,  and  tho  glare  of  eleven  batteries  bursting  upon 
the  torn  sky  of  the  Union,  like  the  cornet,  wh'sh,  at  this  very 
moment,  burns 

"  In  the  Aretic  sky,  and'from  his  horrid  hair 
Shakes  pestilence  and  wan" 

Those  batteries  rained  their  storm  of  iron  hail  on  one  poor  siege- 
worn  company,  because  in  obedience  to  lawful  authority,  in  the 
performance  of  sworn  duty,  the  gallant  Anderson  resolved  to  keep 


25x  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

his  oath.  That  'brave  and  faithful  band,  by  remaining  at  their 
post,  did  not  hurt  a  hair  of  the  head  of  a  Carolinian,  bond  or  free. 
The  United  .States  proposed  not  to  reinforce,  but  to  feed  them. 
But  the  Confederate  leaders  would  not  allow  them  even  the  poor 
boon  of  being  starved  into  surrender;  and  because  some  laws  had 
been  passed  somewhere,  by  which  it  was  alleged  that  the  return  of 
some  slaves  (not  one  from  Carolina)  had  been  or  might  be  ob 
structed,  South  Carolina,  disclaiming  the  protection  of  courts  and 
of  Congress,  which  had  never  been  withheld  from  her,  has  in 
augurated  a  ruthless  civil  war.  If,  for  the  frivolous  reasons  as 
signed,  the  seceding  States  have  chosen  to  plunge  into  this  gulf, 
while  all  the  peaceful  temperaments  and  constitutional  remedies  of 
the  Union  were  within  their  reach,  and  offers  of  further  compro 
mise  and  additional  guarantees  were  daily  tendered  them,  what 
hope,  what  possibility  of  peace  can  there  be  when  the  Union  is 
broken  up,  when,  in  addition  to  all  other  sources  of  deadly  quarrel, 
a  general  exodus  of  the  slave  population  begins  (as  beyond  all 
question  it  will),  and  nothing  but  war  remains  for  the  settlement  of 
controversies  ?  The  Vice-President  of  the  new  Confederacy  states 
that  it  rests  on  slavery  ;  but  from  its  very  nature  it  must  rest 
equally  on  war;  eternal  war,  first  between  North  and  South,  and 
then  between  the  smaller  fragments  into  which  some  of  the  disin 
tegrated  parts  may  crumble.  The  work  of  demons  has  already 
begun.  Besides  the  hosts  mustered  for  the  capture  or  destruction 
of  Washington,  Eastern  Virginia  has  let  loose  the  dogs  of  war  on 
the  loyal  citizens  of  Western  Virginia;  they  are  straining  at  the 
leash  in  .Maryland  and  Kentucky;  Tennessee  threatens  to  set  a 
price  on  the  head  of  her  noble  Johnson  and  his  friends;  a  civil 
war  rages  in  Missouri.  Why,  in  the  name  of  Heaven,  has  not 
Western  Virginia,  separated  from  Eastern  Virginia  by  mountain 
ridges,  by  climate,  by  the  course  of  her  rivers,  by  the  character  of 
her  population  and  the  nature  of  her  industry — why  has  she  not  as 
i>-ood  a  right  to  stay  in  the  Union,  Avhich  she  inherited  from  her 
Washington,  as  Eastern  Virginia  has  to  abandon  it  for  the  mush 
room  Confederacy  forced  upon  her  from  Montgomery?  Are  no 
rights  sacred  but  those  of  rebellion;  no  oaths  binding  but  those 
taken  by  men  already  foresworn ;  are  liberty  of  thought,  and 
speech,  and  action  nowhere  to  be  tolerated  except  on  the  part  of 
th«ise  by  whom  laws  arc  trampled  under  foot,  arsenals  and  mints 
plundered,  governments  warr-ed  against,  and  where  their  patriotic 
defenders  are  assailed  by  ferocious  and  murderous  mobs? 


THE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY.  281 

SECESSION    ESTABLISHES    A    FOREIGN    POWER    OX    THE    CONTINENT. 

Then  consider  the  monstrous  nature  and  reach  of  the  pretensions 
in  which  we  are  expected  to  acquiesce,  which  are  nothing  less 
than  that  the  United  States  should  allow  a  FOREIGN  POWER,  by 
surprise,  treachery,  and  violence,  to  possess  itself  of  one  half  of 
their  territory  and  all  the  public  property  and  public  establish 
ments  contained  in  it;  for  if  the  Southern  Confederacy  is  recog 
nized,  it  becomes  a  foreign  power,  established  along  a  curiously 
dove-tailed  frontier  of  1,500  miles,  commjlhding  some  of  the  most 
important  commercial  and  military  positions  and  lines  of  com 
munication  for  travel  and  trade  ;  half  the  sea-coast  of  the  Union; 
the  navigation  of  our  Mediterranean  Sea  (the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  one 
third  as  large  as  the  Mediterranean  of  Europe),  and,  above  all,  the 
great  arterial  inlet  into  the  heart  of  the  continent,  through  which 
its  very  life-blood  pours  its  imperial  tides.  I  say  wo  are  coolly 
summoned  to  surrender  all  this  to  a  foreign  power.  Would  we 
surrender  it  to  England,  to  France,  to  Spain  ?  Xot  an  inch  of  it ; 
why  then  to  the  Southern  Confederacy  ?  Would  any  other  Gov 
ernment  on  the  earth,  unless  compelled  by  the  direst  necessity, 
make  such  a  surrender  ?  Does  not  France  keep  an  army  of 
100,000  men  in  Algeria  to  prevent  a  few  wandering  tribes  of  Arabs, 
a  recent  conquest,  from  asserting  their  independence?  Did  not 
England  strain  her  resources  to  the  utmost  tension  to  prevent  the 
native  kingdoms  of  Central  India  (civilized  states  two  thousand 
years  ago,  and  while  painted  chieftains  ruled  the  savage  clans  of 
ancient  Britain)  from  re-establishing  their  sovereignty  ?  and  shall 
we  be  expected,  without  a  struggle,  to  abandon  a  great  integral 
part  of  the  United  States  to  a  foreign  power  ? 

Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that  in  granting  to  the  seceding 
States,  jointly  and  severally,  the  right  to  leave  the  Union,  we  con 
cede  to  them  the  right  of  resuming,  if  they  please,  their  former 
allegiance  to  England,  France,  and  Spain.  It  rests  with  them, 
with  any  one  of  them,  if  the  right  of  secession  is  admitted,  again 
to  plant  a  European  Government  side  by  side  with  that  of  the 
United  States  on  the  soil  of  America ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  the 
most  improbable  upshot  of  this  ill-starred  rebellion,  if  allowed  to 
prosper.  Is  this  the  Monroe  doctrine  for  which  the  United  States 
have  been  contending?  The  disunion  press  in  Virginia,  last  year, 
openly  encouraged  the  idea  of  a  French  protectorate,  and  her  Leg 
islature  has,  I  believe,  sold  out  the  James  Paver  Canal,  the  darling 


282  TnE  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

enterprise  of  Washington,  to  a  company  in  France,  supposed  to 
enjoy  the  countenance  of  the  Emperor.  The  seceding  patriots  of 
South  Carolina  were  understood  by  the  correspondent  of  the  Lon 
don  Times  to  admit  that  they  would  rather  be  subject  to  a  British 
prince  than  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States.  Whether 
they  desire  it  or  not,  the  moment  the  seceders  lose  the  protection 
of  the  United  States,  they  hold  their  independence  at  the  mercy 
of  the  powerful  Governments  of  Europe.  If  the  navy  of  the 
North  should  withdraw  its  protection,  there  is  not  a  Southern 
State  on  the  Atlantic  orvthe  Gulf  which  might  not  be  re-colonized 
by  Europe  in  six  months  after  the  outbreak  of  a  foreign  war. 

IMMENSE    COST    OF    THE    TERRITORIES    CLAIMED    BY    SECESSION, 

Then  look  at  the  case  for  a  moment  in  reference  to  the  cost  of 
the  acquisitions  of  territory,  made  on  this  side  of  the  continent, 
within  the  present  century — Florida,  Louisiana,  Texas,  and  the 
entire  coast  of  Alabama  and  Mississippi — vast  regions  acquired 
from  France,  Spain,  and  Mexico,  within  sixty  years.  Louisiana 
cost  $15,000,000,  when  our  population  was  5,000,000,  represent 
ing,  of  course,  a  burden  of  $90,000,000  at  the  present  day.  Flor 
ida  cost  $5,000,000,  in  1S20,  when  our  population  was  less  than 
10,000,000,  equal  to  $15,000,000  at  the  present  day,  besides  the 
expenses  of  General  Jackson's  war  in  1818,  and  the  Florida  war 
of  1840,  in  which  some  $80,000,000  were  thrown  away,  for  the 
purpose  of  driving  a  handful  of  starving  Serninoles  from  the  Ever 
glades.  Texas  cost  $200,000,000  expended  in  the  Mexican  war,  in 
addition  to  the  lives  of  thousands  of  brave  men ;  besides  $10,000,000 
paid  to  her  in  1850,  for  ceding  a  tract  of  land,  which  was  not  hers, 
to  New  Mexico.  A  great  part  of  the  expense  of  the  military 
establishment  of  the  United  States  has  been  incurred  in  defending 
the  Southwestern  frontier.  The  troops,  meanly  surprised  and 
betrayed  in  Texas,  were  sent  there  to  protect  her  defenseless  bor 
der  settlements  from  the  tomahawk  and  scalping-knife.  If  to  all 
this  expenditure  we  add  that  of  the  forts,  the  navy  yards,  the 
court-houses,  the  custom-houses,  and  the  other  public  buildings 
in  these  regions,  $500,000,000  of  the  public  funds,  of  which,  at 
least,  five  sixths  have  been  levied  by  indirect  taxation  from  the 
North  and  Northwest,  have  been  expended  in  and  for  the  Gulf 
States  in  this  century.  Would  England,  would  France,  would  any 
Government  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  surrender,  without  a  death- 
struggle,  such  a  dear-bought  territory  ? 


THE  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 


283 


THE   UNITED    STATES    CAN   XOT    GIVE    UP    THE    COXTEOL    OF  THE    OUT 
LET    OF    THE    MISSISSIPPI. 

But  of  tliis  I  make  no  account ;  the  dollars  are  spent ;  let  them 
go.  But  look  at  the  subject  for  a  moment  in  its  relations  to  the 
safety,  to  the  prosperity,  and  the  growth  of  the  country.  The 
Missouri  and  the  Mississippi  rivers,  with  their  hundred  tributaries, 
give  to  the  great  central  basin  of  our  continent  its  character  and 
destiny.  The  outlet  of  this  mighty  system  lies  between  the  States 
of  Tennessee  and  Missouri,  of  Mississippi  and  Arkansas,  and 
through  the  State  of  Louisiana.  The  ancient  province  so- 
called,  the  proudest  monument  of  the  mighty  monarch  whose 
name  it  bears,  passed  from  the  jurisdiction  of  France  to  that  of 
Spain  in  1TG3.  Spain  coveted  it,  not  that  she  might  fill  it  with 
prosperous  colonies  and  rising  states,  but  that  it  might  stretch  as 
a  broad,  waste  barrier,  infested  with  warlike  tribes,  between  the 
Anglo-American  power  and  the  silver  mines  of  Mexico.  With  the 
independence  of  the  United  States,  the  fear  of  a  still  more  danger 
ous  neighbor  grew  upon  Spain,  and  in  the  insane  expectation  of 
checking  the  progress  of  the  Union  westward,  she  threatened,  and 
at  times  attempted,  to  close  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  on  the 
rapidly  increasing  trade  of  the  "West.  The  bare  suggestion  of  such 
a  policy  roused  the  population  upon  the  banks  of  the  Ohio,  then 
inconsiderable,  as  one  man.  Their  confidence  in  Washington 
scarcely  restrained  them  from  rushing  to  the  seizure  of  ISTew 
Orleans,  when  the  treaty  of  San  Lorenzo  El  Real,  in  1795,  stipu 
lated  for  them  a  precarious  right  of  navigating  the  noble  river  to 
the  sea,  with  a  right  of  deposit  at  ISTew  Orleans.  This  subject 
was,  for  years,  the  turning-point  of  the  politics  of  the  West,  and  it 
was  perfectly  well  understood  that,  sooner  or  later.,  she  would  be 
content  with  nothing  less  than  the  sovereign  control  of  the 
mighty  stream,  from  its  head  spring  to  its  outlet  in  the  Gulf;  and 
that  is  as  true  now  as  .it  was  then. 

So  stood  affairs  at  the  -close  of  the  last  century,  when  the  co 
lossal  power  of  thte  first  Napoleon  burst  upon  the  world.  In  the  vast 
recesses  of  his  Titanic  ambition  he  cherished,  as  a  leading  object  of 
his  policy,  to  acquire  for  Franco  a  colonial  empire  which  should 
balance  that  of  England.  In  pursuit  of  this  policy  he  fixed  his  eyo 
on  the  ancient  regal  colony  which  Louis  XIV.  had  founded  in  the 
heart  of  Xorth  America,  and  he  tempted  Spain,  by  the  paltry 
bribe  of  creating  a  kingdom  of  Etruria  for  a  Bourbon  prince,  to 


TIIE   QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

back  to  France  the  then  boundless  wastes  of  the  territory 
of  Louisiana.  The  cession  was  made  by  the  secret  treaty  of  San 
lldefonso,  of  the  1st  of  October,  1800  (of  which  one  sentence  only 
has  ever  been  published,  but  that  sentence  gave  away  half  a  con 
tinent),  and  the  youthful  conqueror  concentrated  all  the  resources 
of  his  mighty  genius  on  the  accomplishment  of  the  vast  project. 
If  successful,  it  would  have  established  the  French  power  on  the 
mouth  and  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  and  would  have 
opposed  the  most  formidable  barrier  to  the  expansion  of  the 
United  States.  The  peace  of  Amiens,  at  this  juncture,  relieved 
N"apoleon  from  the  pressure  of  the  war  with  England,  and  every 
thing  seemed  propitious  to  the  success  of  the  great  enterprise. 
The  fate  of  America  trembled  for  a  moment  in  a  doubtful  balance, 
and  five  hundred  thousand  citizens  in  that  region  felt  the  danger 
and  sounded  the  alarm.* 

But  in  another  moment  the  aspect  of  affairs  was  changed  by  a 
stroke  of  policy  grand,  unexpected,  and  fruitful  of  consequences, 
perhaps  without  a  parallel  in  history.  The  short-lived  truce  of 
Amiens  was  about  to  end ;  the  renewal  of  war  was  inevitable ; 
Napoleon  saw  that  before  he  could  take  possession  of  Louisiana  it 
would  be  wrested  from  him  by  England,  who  commanded  the  seas, 
and  he  determined  at  once,  not  merely  to  deprive  her  of  this  mag 
nificent  conquest,  but  to  contribute,  as  far  as  in  him  lay,  to  build 
up  a  great  rival  maritime  power  in  the  West.  The  Government 
of  the  United  States,  not  less  sagacious,  seized  the  golden  moment 
— a  moment  such  as  does  not  occur  twice  in  a  thousand  years. 
Mr.  Jefferson  perceived  that,  unless  acquired  by  the  United  States, 
Louisiana  would  in  a  short  time  belong  to  France  or  to  England, 
and  with  equal  wisdom  and  courage  he  determined  that  it  should 
belong  to  neither.  True,  he  held  the  acquisition  to  be  unconstitu 
tional,  but  he  threw  to  the  winds  the  resolutions  of  1798,  which 
had  just  brought  him  into  power;  he  broke  the  Constitution,  and 
he  gained  an  empire.  Mr.  Monroe  was  sent  to  France  to  conduct 
the  negotiation,  in  conjunction  with  Chancellor  Livingston,  the 
resident  minister,  contemplating,  however,  at  thfit  time  only  the 
acquisition  of  New  Orleans  and  the  adjacent  territory. 

But  they  were  dealing  with  a  man  that  did  nothing  by  halves. 
Napoleon  knew — and  we  ~know — that  to  give  up  the  mouth  of  the 
river  was  to  give  up  its  course.  On  Easter-Sunday  of  1803  he 


*  Speech  of  Mr.  Eoss,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  14th  February,  1803. 


THE  QUESTIONS  OF   THE  DAY.  285 

amazed    his   council   with    the   announcement,    that  he   had   de 
termined   to  cede   the  whole  of  Louisiana   to  the  United  States. 
No  less  to  the  astonishment  of  the  American  envoys,  they  were 
told  by  the  French  negotiators  at  the  first  interview,  that  their 
master  was  prepared  to  treat  with  them,  not  merely  for  the  Isle 
of  New  Orleans,  but  for  the  whole  vast  province  which  bore  the 
name  of  Louisiana,  whose  boundaries,  then  unsettled,  have  since 
been    carried  on   the   north  to  the   British  line,  on   the  west  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean— a  territory  half  as  big  as  Europe  transferred 
by   a   stroke  of   the   pen.    Fifty-eight  years   have   elapsed   since 
the   acquisition  was  made.     The   States  of  Louisiana,  Arkansas, 
Missouri,    Iowa,  Minnesota,  and   Kansas,  the   Territories  of  Ne 
braska,  Dacotah,  and  Jefferson,  and  part  of  Colorado,  have  been 
established  within  its  limits,  on   this   side  of  the  Rocky  Mount 
ains;    the   State   of  Oregon   and    the   Territory   of   Washington 
on  their  western   slope;    while  a  tide  of  population  is  annually 
pouring  into  the  region  destined  in  addition  to  the  natural  increase, 
before  the  close  of  the  century,  to  double  the  number  of  the  States 
and  Territories.     For  the  entire  region  west  of  the  Alleghanies 
and  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  Missouri  and  the  Mississippi 
form  the  natural  outlet  to  the  sea.     Without  counting  the  popula 
tion  of  the  seceding  States,  there  are  ten  millions  of  the  free  citi 
zens  of  the  country,  between  Pittsburg  and  Fort  Union,  who  claim 
the  course  and  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  as  belonging  to  the 
United  States.     It  is  theirs  by  a  transfer  of  truly  imperial  origin 
and  magnitude ;  theirs  by  a  sixty  years'  undisputed  title ;  theirs  by 
occupation  and  settlement ;  theirs  by  the  law  of  Nature  and  of 
God.     Louisiana,  .a  fragment  of  this  colonial   empire,   detached 
from  its  main  portion  and  first  organized  as  a  State,  undertakes  to 
secede  from  the  Union,  and  thinks  by  so  doing  that  she  will  be 
allowed  by  the  Government  and  people  of  the  United  States  to 
revoke  this  imperial  transfer,  to  disregard  this  possession  and  oc 
cupation  of  sixty  years,  to  repeal  this  law  of  Nature  and  of  God  ; 
and  she  fondly  believes  that  ten  millions  of  the  free  people  of  the 
Union  will  allow  her  and  her  seceding  brethren  to  open  and  shut 
the  portals  of  this  mighty  region  at  their  pleasure.     They  may  do 
so,  and  the  swarming  millions  which  throng  the  course  of  these 
noble  streams  and  their  tributaries  may  consent  to  exchange  the 
charter  which  they  hold  from  the  God  of  heaven  for  a  bit  of  parch 
ment  signed  at  Montgomery  or  Richmond ;  but  if  I  may  repeat  the 
words  which  I  have  lately  used  on  another  occasion,  it  will  be 


28G  TIIE  QUESTIONS  OF   THE  DAY. 

when  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Rocky  Mountains,  which  form  the 
eastern  and  western  walls  of  the  imperial  valley,  shall  sink  to  the 
level  of  the  sea,  and  the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri  shall  flow  back 
to  their  fountains. 

Such,  fellow-citizens,  as  I  contemplate  them,  are  the  great  issues 
before  the  country ;  nothing  less,  in  a  word,  than  whether  the  work 
of  our  noble  fathers  of  the  Revolutionary  and  Constitutional  age 
shall  perish  or  endure;  whether  this  great  experiment  in  national 
polity,  which  binds  a  family  of  free  republics  in  one  united  govern 
ment — the  most  hopeful  plan  for  combining  the  home-bred  blessings 
of  a  small  state  with  the  stability  and  power  a  great  empire — shall 
be  treacherously  and  shamefully  stricken  down,  in  the  moment  of 
its  most  successful  operation,  or  whether  it  shall  be  bravely,  patri 
otically,  triumphantly  maintained.  We  wage  no  war  of  conquest 
and  subjugation;  we  aim  at  nothing  but  to  protect  our  loyal 
fellow-citizens,  who  against  fearful  odds  are  fighting  the  battles 
of  the  Union  in  the  disaffected  States,  and  taj,*e-establish,  not  for 
ourselves  alone,  but  for  our  deluded  fellow-citizens,  the  mild  sway 
of  the  Constitution  and  the  laws.  The  result  can  not  be  doubted. 
Twenty  millions  of  freemen,  forgetting  their  divisions,  are  rallying 
as  one  man  in  support  of  the  righteous  cause  ;  their  willing  hearts 
and  their  strong  hands,  their  fortunes  and  their  lives,  are  laid  upon 
the  altar  of  the  country.  "We  contend  for  the  great  inheritance  of 
constitutional  freedom  transmitted  from  our  revolutionary  fathers. 
We  engage  in  the  struggle  forced  upon  us  with  sorrow,  as  against 
our  misguided  brethren,  but  Avith  high  heart  and  faith,  as  we  war 
for  that  Union  which  our  sainted  Washington  commended  to  our 
dearest  affections.  The  sympathy  of  the  civilized  world  is  on  our 
side,  and  will  join  us  in  prayers  to  Heaven  for  the  success  of  our 
arms. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX  A  (p.  238). 

AFTER  the  remarks  in  the  foregoing  address  (p.  238)  were  written,  touching  the 
impossibility  at  the  present  day  of  repealing  the  instrument  by  which,  in  1TS8, 
South  Carolina  gave  her  consent  and  ratification  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  I  sought  the  opinion  on  that  point  of  Mr.  George  Tieknor  Curtis,  the  learned 
and  accurate  historian  of  the  Constitution.  It  afforded  me  great  pleasure  to  find 
from  the  following  letter  that  my  view  of  the  subject  is  sustained  by  his  high  au 
thority  : 

JAMAICA  PLAIN,  Saturday  Evening,  July  8, 1861. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Since  I  came  home  I  have  looked  carefully  at  the  ratification  of 
the  Constitution  by  South  Carolina.  The  formal  instrument  sent  to  Congress  seems 
to  be  much  more  in  the  nature  of  a  deed  or  grant  than  of  an  ordinance.  An  ordi 
nance  would  seem  to  be  an  instrument  adopted  by  a  public  body  for  the  regulation 
of  a  subject  that  in  its  nature  remains  under  the  regulation  of  that  body,  to  operate 
until  otherwise  ordered.  A  deed  or  grant,  on  the  other  hand,  operates  to  pass 
something ;  and  unless  there  be  a  reservation  of  some  control  over  the  subject-mat 
ter  by  the  grantor,  his  cession  is  necessarily  irrevocable.  I  can  perceive  no  reason 
why  these  distinctions  are  not  applicable  to  the  cession  of  poliiical  powers  by  a  peo 
ple,  or  their  duly  authorized  representatives.  The  question  submitted  to  the  people 
of  South  Carolina  by  the  Congress  was,  whether  they  would  cede  the  powers  of 
government  embraced  in  an  instrument  sent  to  them,  and  called  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  In  other  words,  they  were  asked  to  make  a  grant  of  those  pow 
ers.  When,  therefore,  the  duly  authorized  delegates  of  the  people  of  South  Carolina 
executed  an  instrument  under  seal,  declaring  that  they,  "  in  the  name  and  behalf  of 
that  people,  "  assent  to  and  ratify  the  said  Constitution^'  I  can  perceive  no  propriety 
in  calling  this  deed  an  ordinance.  If  they  had  adopted  an  instrument  entitled 
"An  Act  [or  ordinance]  for  the  Government  of  the  People  of  Sguth  Carolina,"  and 
had  gone  on  in  the  body  of  the  instrument  to  declare  that  the  powers  embraced  in 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  should  be  exercised  by  the  agents  therein  pro 
vided,  until  otherwise  ordered,  there  would  have  been  something  left  for  a  repeal  to 
operate  upon.  But  nothing  like  this  was  done,  and  everybody  knows  that  such  a 
ratification  could  not  have  been  accepted. 

There  are  those,  as  you  are  well  aware,  who  pretend  that  the  most  absolute  and 
unrestricted  terms  of  cession,  which  would  carry  any  other  subject  entirely  out  of 
the  grantor,  do  not  t-o  operate  when  the  subject  of  the  grant  is  political  sovereignty. 
Eut  a  political  school  which  maintains  that  a  deed  is  to  be  construed  in  one  way 
when  it  purports  to  convey  one  description  of  right,  such  as  political  sovereignty, 
and  in  another  way  when  it  purports  to  convey  a  right  of  another  kind,  such  as 
property,  would  hold  a  very  weak  brief  in  any  tribunal  of  jurisprudence,  if  the 
question  could  be  brought  to  that  arbitrament.  The  American  people  have  beeii 
very  much  accustomed  to  treat  political  grants  made  by  the  sovereign  power  with 
out  reservation,  as  irrevocable  conveyances  and  executed  contracts ;  and  although 
they  hold  to  the  right  of  revolution,  the\  have  not  yet  found  out  how  a  deed,  abso 
lute  on  its  face,  i*  to  be  treated  in  point  of  law  as  a  repealable  instrument,  because 
it  deals  wi;h  political  rights  and  duties.  If  any  court  in  South  Carolina  were  now 
to  have  the  question  come  b-  fore  it,  whether  the  laws  of  the  United  States  are  still 
binding  upon  their  citizens,  I  think  they  would  have  to  put  their  denial  on  the  naked 


APPENDIX. 

doctrine  of  revolution  ;  and  that  they  could  not  hold  that,  as  matter  of  law  and 
regular  political  action,  their  ratification  deed  of  May  23d,  1738,  is  "  repealed"  by 
their  late  ordinance.  Mo?',  truly  and  respectfully  yours, 

GE011GE  T.  CURTIS. 
ME.  EVERETT. 


APPENDIX  B  (p.  257). 
HON.  REVEEDY  Jonxsox  TO  ME.  EVERETT. 

BALTIMOKE,  2±tk  June,  18C1. 
MY  DEAR.  MR.  EVERETT: 

I  have  your  note  of  the  18th,  and  cheerfully  authorize  you  to  use  my  name,  aa 
you  suggest. 

The  letter  I  read  in  the  speech  which  I  made  in  Frederick  should  be  conclusive 
evidence  that,  at  its  date,  Mr.  Calhoun  denied  the  right  of  secession,  as  a  constitu 
tional  right,  either  express  or  implied. 

Hut,  in  addition  to  this,  I  had  frequent  opportunities  of  knowing  that  this  Avas 
his  opinion.  It  was  my  good  fortune  to  be  a  member  of  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  while  he  was  one  of  its  greatest  ornaments  for  four  years,  from  1845,  until  I 
became  a  member  of  Gen.  Taylor's  administration,  and  during  two  sessions  (I  think 
1S46  and  1847)  I  lived  in  the  same  house  with  him.  lie  did  me  the  honor  to  give 
me  much  of  his  confidence,  and  frequently  his  nullification  doctrine  was  the  sub 
ject  of  conversation.  Time  and  time  again  have  I  heard  him,  and  with  ever  in 
creased  surprise  at  his  wonderful  acuteness,  defend  it  on  constitutional  grounds, 
and  distinguish  it,  in  that  respect,  from  the  doctrine  of  secession.  This  last  he 
never,  with  me,  placed  on  any  other  ground  than  that  of  revolution.  This,  he  said, 
was  to  destroy  the  government;  and  no  Constitution,  the  work  of  sane  men,  ever 
provided/or  its  oicn  destruction.  The  other  was  to  preserve  it;  was,  practically, 
but  to  amend  it,  and  in  a  constitutional  mode.  As  you  know,  and  he  was  ever  told, 
I  never  took  that  view.  I  could  see  no  more  constitutional  warrant  for  this  than 
for  the  other,  which,  I  repeat* he  ever,  in  all  our  interviews,  repudiated,  as  wholly 
indefensible  as  a  constitutional  remedy.  His  mind,  with  all  its  wonderful  power, 
was  so  ingenious  that  it  often  led  him  into  error,  and  at  times  to  such  an  extent  as 
to  be  guilty  of  the  most  palpable  inconsistencies.  His  views  of  the  tariff  and  inter 
nal  improvement  powers  of  the  government  are  instances.  His  first  opinions 
upon  both  were  decided  and  almost  ultra.  His  earliest  reputation  was  won  as  their 
advocate,  and  yet  four  years  before  his  death  he  denounced  both,  with  constant 
zeal  and  with  rare  power,  and,  while  doing  so,  boldly  asserted  his  uniform  consist 
ency.  It  is  no  marvel,  therefore,  with  those  who  have  observed  his  career  and 
studied  his  character,  to  hear  It  stated  now  that  he  was  the  advocate  of  constitu 
tional  secession. 

It  m;iy  be  so,  and  perhaps  is  so,  but  this  in  no  way  supports  the  doctrine,  as  far 
as  it  is  rested  on  his  authority.  His  first  views  were  well  considered,  and  formed 
without  the  influence  of  extraneous  circumstances,  of  which  he  seemed  to  me  to  be 
often  the  victim.  Pure  in  private  life  and  in  motives,  ever,  as  I  believe  and  have 
always  believed,  patriotic,  he  was  induced,  seemingly,  without  knowing  it,  in  his 
later  life,  to  surrender  to  section  what  was  intended  for  the  whole,  his  great  powers 
of  analysis  and  his  extraordinary  talent  for  public  service.  If  such  a  heresy, 
therefore,  as  constitutional  secession  could  rest  on  any  individual  name ;  if  any 
mere  human  authority  could  support  such  an  absurd  and  destructive  folly,  it  can  not 
be  said  to  rest  on  that  of  Mr.  Calhoun.  With  sincere  regard,  your  friend, 

KEVEEDT  JOHNSON. 

HON.  EDWARD  EVERETT,  Boston. 


APPENDIX. 


289 


APPENDIX  C  (p.  270). 

The  number  of  fugitive  slaves  from  all  the  States,  as  I  learn  from  Mr.  J.  G.  G. 
Kennedy,  the  intelligent  superintendent  of  the  Census  Bureau,  was,  in  the  year 
1S50,  1,011,  being  about  one  to  every  3,165,  the  entire  number  of  slaves  at  that  time 
being  3,200,364 — a  ratio  of  rather  less  than  l-30th  of  one  per  cent.  This  very  small 
ratio  was  diminished  in  1SCO.  By  the  last  census,  the  whole  number  of  slaves  in  the 
United  States  was  8,949,551,  and  the  number  of  escaping  fugitives  was  803,  being  a 
trifle  over  l-50th  of  one  per  cent.  Of  these,  it  is  probable  that  much  the  greater 
parr  escaped  to  the  places  of  refuge  in  the  South,  alluded  to  in  the  text,  At  all 
events,  it  is  well  known  that  escaping  slaves,  reclaimed  in  the  Free  States,  have  in 
almost  every  instance  been  restored. 

There  is  usually  some  difficulty  in  reclaiming  fugitives  of  any  description  who 
have  escaped  to  another  jurisdiction.  In  most  of  the  cases  of  fugitives  from  justice, 
which  came  under  my  cognizance  as  United  States  Mini-ter  in  London,  every  con 
ceivable  difficulty  was  thrown  in  my  way,  and  sometimes  with  success,  by  the 
counsel  for  the  parties  whose  extradiiion  was  demanded  under  the  Webster-Ash- 
burton  treaty.  The  French  ambassador  told  me  that  he  had  made  thirteen  unsuc 
cessful  attempts  to  procure  the  surrender  of  fugitives  from  justice,  under  the  extra 
dition  treaty  betAveen  the  two  governments.  The  difficulty  generally  grew  out  of 
the  difference  of  the  jurisprudence  of  the  two  countries,  in  the  definition  of  crimes, 
rules  of  evidence,  and  mode  of  procedure. 

The  number  of  blacks  living  in  Upper  Canada,  and  assumed  to  be  all  from  the 
United  States,  is  sometimes  stated  as  high  as  forty  thousand,  and  is  constantly  re 
ferred  to  at  the  South  as  showing  the  great  number  of  fugitives.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  manumissions  far  exceed  in  number  the  escaping  fugitives.  I 
learn  from  Mr.  Kennedy  that  while  in  1SGO  the  number  of  fugitives  was  but  803, 
that  of  manumissions  was  3,010.  As  the  manumitted  slaves  are  compelled  to  leave 
the  States  where  they  are  set  free,  and  a  small  portion  only  emigrate  to  Liberia,  at 
least  nine  tenths  of  this  number  are  scattered  through  the  Northern  S.r,?Uos  ;md 
Canada.  In  the  decade  from  1S50  to  1860,  it  is  estimated  that  20,000  slaves  were 
manumitted,  of  whom  three  fourths  probably  joined  their  brethren  in  Canada. 
This  supply  alone,  with  the  natural  increase  on  the  old  stock  and  the  new-comers, 
will  account  for  the  entire  colored  population  of  the  province. 

A  very  able  and  instructive  discussion  of  the  statistics  of  this  subject  will  be  found 
in  the  Boston  Courier  of  the  9th  of  July.  It  is  there  demonstrated  that  the  assertion 
that  the  Northern  States  got  rid  of  their  slaves  by  selling  them  to  the  South  is  ut 
terly  unsupported  by  the  official  returns  of  the  census. 


APPENDIX   D  (p.  278). 

In  his  message  to  the  Confederate  Congress,  of  the  29th  April  last,  Mr.  Jefferson 
Davis  presents  a  most  glowing  account  of  the  prosperity  of  the  peculiar  institution 
of  the  South.  lie  states,  indeed,  that  it  was  "  imperiled"  by  Northern  agitation, 
but  heroes  not  affirm  -and  the  contrary,  as  far  ;is  I  have  observed,  is  strenuously 
maintained  at  the  South  >  that  its  progress  has  been  checked,  or  its  stability  in  the 
slightest  degree  shaken,  by  that  cause. 

I  think  I  have  seen  statements  by  Mr.  Senator  Hunter,  of  Virginia,  that  the  in 
stitution  of  slavery  has  been  benefited  and  its  interests  promoted  since  the  sys 
tematic  agitation  of  the  subject  began,  but  I  am  unable  to  lay  my  hand  on  the 
speech,  where,  if  I  recollect  rightly,  this  view  was  taken  by  the  distinguished 
senator. 

I  find  the  following  extracts  from  the  speeches  of  two  eminent  Southern  senators 
in  "the  Union*"  a  spirited  paper  published  at  St.  Cloud,  Minnesota: 


290 


APPENDIX. 


"  It  was  often  said  at  the  North,  and  admitted  by  candid  statesmen  at  the  South, 
that  anti-slavery  agitation  strengthened,  rather  than  weakened,  slavery.  Here  arc 
the  admissions  of  Senator  Hammond  on  this  point,  in  a  speech  which  he  delivered 
in  South  Carolina,  October  24th,  1853. 

"And  what,  then  (1S33),  was  the  state  of  opinion  in  the  South  ?  Washington  had 
emancipated  his  slaves.  Jefferson  had  bitterly  denounced  the  system,  and  had 
done  all  that  he  could  to  destroy  it.  Our  Clays,  Marshalls,  Crawfords,  and  many 
other  prominent  Southern  men  had  led  off  in  the  Colonization  scheme.  The  inevi 
table  effect  in  the  South  was,  that  she  believed  slavery  to  be  an  evil — weakness- 
disgraceful  ;  nay,  a  sin.  She  shrunk  from  the  discussion  of  it.  She  cowered  under 
every  threat.  She  attempted  to  apologize,  to  excuse  herself  under  the  plea— which 
was  true— that  England  had  forced  it  upon  her,  and  in  fear  and  trembling  she 
awaited  a  doom  that  she  deemed  inevitable.  But  a  few  bold  spirits  took  the  ques 
tion  up ;  they  compelled  the  South  to  investigate  it  anew  and  thoroughly,  and  what 
is  the  result  ?  Why,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  now  a  Southern  man  who  feels  the 
system  to  be  the  lightest  burden  on  his  conscience  ;  who  does  not,  in  fact,  regard  it 
as  an  equal  advantage  to  the  master  and  the  slave,  elevating  both;  as  wealth, 
strength,  and  power ;  and  as  one  of  the  main  pillars  and  controlling  influences 
of  modern  civilization,  and  who  is  not  now  prepared  to  maintain  it  at  every  haz 
ard.  Suck  have  been  the  happy  results  of  this  abolition  discussion.  So  far  our 
gain  has  been  immense  from  this  contest,  savage  and  malignant  as  it  has  been." 

And  again  he  say> : 

"  The  rock  of  Gibraltar  does  not  stand  so  firm  on  its  basis  as  our  slave  system. 
For  a  quarter  of  a  century  it  has  borne  the  brunt  of  a  hurricane  as  fierce  and  piti 
less  as  ever  raged.  At  the  North  and  in  Europe,  they  cried  '  Havoc  !'  and  let  loose 
upon  us  all  the  dogs  of  \\  ar.  And  how  stands  it  now  ?  Why,  in  this  very  quarter 
of  a  century  our  slaves  have  doubled  in  numbers,  and  each  slave  has  more  than 
doubled  in  value.  The  very  negro  who,  as  a  prime  laborer,  would  have  brought 
four  hundred  dollars  in  1828,  would  now,  with  thirty  more  years  upon  him,  sell 
for  eight  hundred  dollars." 

Equally  strong  admissions  were  made  by  A.  H.  Stephens,  now  Vice-President 
of  the  "  Confederacy,"  in  that  carefully  prepared  speech  which  he  delivered  in 
Georgia  in  July,  1859,  on  the  occasion  of  retiring  from  public  life.  He  theu  said  : 

"  Nor  am  I  of  the  number  of  those  who  believe  that  we  have  sustained  any  in 
jury  by  these  agitations.  It  is  true,  we  were  not  responsible  for  them.  We  were 
not  the  aggressors.  We  acted  on  the  defensive.  We  repelled  assault,  calumny, 
and  aspersion  by  argument,  by  reason,  and  truth.  But  so  far  from  the  insiitution 
of  African  slavery  in  our  section  being  weakened  or  rendered  less  secure  by  the 
discussion,  iny  deliberate  judgment  is  that  it  has  been  greatly  strengthened  and 
fortified — strengthened  and  fortified  not  only  in  the  opinions,  convictions,  and  con 
sciences  of  men,  but  by  the  action  of  the  government !" 


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